


STAR WARS VIII: The Battle of The Force

by AphroditesTummyRolls



Series: We Stan a Healthy Family Dynamic (The Kes-verse) [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Finn gets an actual character arc, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Torture, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Rian Johnson? Never heard of him!, Rose is a Badass, Rose is grieving Paige, The Kes-verse, The Last Jedi Rewrite, The Last Jedi we deserved, We Stan a Healthy Family Dynamic, part of a series, you should read those first probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:35:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22364212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AphroditesTummyRolls/pseuds/AphroditesTummyRolls
Summary: The discovery of the Resistance Base on D'Qar leads to a hasty evacuation for General Organa's rebels, sending them deep into space en route to the salt planet of Crait. However, the First Order is aware of their movements and the ambush is swift and brutal, scattering what is left of the Resistance into hyperspace.Poe Dameron finds his relationships tested, both personally and professionally, when he and Leia clash on the results of a costly operation and people from Finn's past come to light that he fears may split them apart. Fresh off the discovery of their Force Sensitivity and the bond created between them, can they reconcile their miscommunications and succeed in their mission to find Rey and Luke Skywalker and help rebuild the Resistance?Rey is torn between the darkness and the light when she convinces Luke Skywalker to train her in the ways of the Jedi, but discovers a mysterious connection between her and Kylo Ren. Ren tries to persuade her to join him on the Dark Side and release the incredible power she has with the Force...
Relationships: Finn & Rose Tico, Kes Dameron & Leia Organa, Kes Dameron & Poe Dameron, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Poe Dameron & Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: We Stan a Healthy Family Dynamic (The Kes-verse) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598431
Comments: 151
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter is HERE! The Last Jedi Rewrite! 
> 
> I changed A LOT OF STUFF. Because RIAN JOHNSON DID A BAD JOB. But, most of those changes will be more apparent in later chapters-- we start our story in the same place. So in this little chapter, the only BIG changes are some characterizations flipped around and shifted-- particularly Rose and Paige Tico, as well as Leia and Poe. Not to mention, if you haven't read the rest of the Kes-verse, this story may confuse you. 
> 
> If you are intrigued, excited, love this, and/or want to give encouragement and support PLEAASE comment and tell your friends. This story is gonna be long, and I will need to know that I'm not screaming my story into the void, or it'll never get done. 
> 
> Thank you so much! Enjoy!
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything in this Star Wars sandbox! None of these characters are my creative property. Disney and Lucasfilm are the owners of this universe, and I am simply writing for my own enjoyment. I DO NOT MAKE ANY MONEY OFF OF MY WRITING.

_“General, I don’t know how much longer we can hold ‘em off—”_

Poe’s voice crackled from the shoddy reception, nearly engulfed by the constant bombardment in the background.

“Commander, the Resistance depends on taking down this dreadnought.” Leia kept her voice steady and strong “Stand your ground.”

What else could she do? Making the jump to hyperspace would kill their fuel supply, and abandoning ship could be suicide—they _could_ take out this ambush. It was within their reach; she could feel it in the Force.

The question remained, though. What would cost more? In fuel and in lives and in respect? Leia could feel her Vice Admiral’s gaze piercing into her, looking at her like she was insane, wasteful—maybe even _arrogant_.

And if his son died by her command, what would Kes do then?

She shook away the doubts, focusing instead on the deep-seated _knowledge_ that this dreadnought would go down. That they could _win_.

They had managed to take out one of the massive cannons on the First Order ship that had ambushed them, but that was when the TIEs started pouring out, swarming their squadrons of X Wings. Leia took a deep breath, searching her feelings, searching the Force for an answer that was more than stalling, that could give actual direction to her pilots while they leaked fuel into space and lost more brave fighters.

Her confidence started to dwindle, and maybe she’d always look back to regret this battle, but she doubled down on that last hope. They _could_ win.

But she had a _bad_ feeling about this.

“Leia—” Kes said again, his voice tight with worry. “Bring them back in. This’ll only cause needless casualties! The jump to hyperspace isn’t going to be too much for us if we do it _in_ _time_.”

She bit her lip, confessing to herself that the idea had merit—that was why she kept him around—before taking a long breath and exhaling hard “No, Kes, not yet. It’s just one more cannon and that ship is useless. Have faith.”

She said it for herself as much as Kes, wishing Luke was there to steady her, to feel those mixed signals the Force was sending her and help her interpret them. She _did_ have faith, though. She had nothing but faith in her commander and their pilots, even as they were swallowed by a fresh assault.

It was just _one_ _more_ cannon, and they’d be free to make the jump to hyperspace and make their repairs.

 _May the Force be with us,_ she thought, dread flooding her veins as her eyes tracked another of their pilots, hit and spiraling into oblivion.

* * *

Sudden pain slammed into the side of Finn’s body, lancing through him from shoulder to hip to knee as he hurried across the threshold onto the Bridge. His legs buckled, he cried out in pain while a familiar voice also shouted over the comm, and Leia turned to see Finn just as he started to blink the stars from his eyes.

“Finn?” she turned to a nearby medic, and soon Finn was being helped over to stand by the General’s side. “Are you hurt?”

 _“General, I’m hit—”_ Poe’s voice cut in and out, sounding breathless and weak. The pain centered on Finn’s left shoulder, throbbing and pulsing as if there was blood pumping from a wound there, but he looked down and saw nothing but his jacket. _Poe’s_ jacket.

He was feeling the force bond. He was feeling Poe’s pain. Without thinking, breathing, or _anything_ in his chest but the sensation of blind panic, Finn blurted out “Don’t you _dare_ die, Poe Dameron.”

A weak chuckle crackled down the line _“I’m good, Buddy. I’m good. There’s some damage, but—Snap watch Paige’s back, she’s taking heavy fire!”_

_“On it, Black Leader.”_

Finn reached out into the channel of connection into Poe’s mind, saturating their bond with as much of his own hope as he could spare. A shaky sigh crackled through the comm link before Poe spoke again, in a stronger voice.

_“Focus on their cannons, guys—Red Leader and Gold Leader, zero in on those TIEs and try to buy us some time.”_

Finn spared a glance out the wide window of the Bridge, being sure to block the sinking feeling it gave him from reverberating through the Force to Poe. They would need more than just their X Wing fighters to take down _all_ those TIEs. The backdrop of stars was nearly blotted out by them, and Finn was barely able to catch a glimpse of Black One through the mess, lit only by blaster fire and explosions.

“ _C’mon_ Poe…” he whispered, trying not to allow the despair to consume him even while seeing it reflected back to him by every face on the Bridge. These were the faces of the high-ranking veterans—the people who had fought the Empire in the Galactic War and won. They had faced impossible odds a hundred times and taken back the galaxy.

But even they looked beyond lost, beyond losing faith.

Kes chewed his nails, braced against the command center as he listened to his son’s grainy voice. His face was a mask of stony worry, leaning over to speak urgently to Leia. The General looked much the same, her eyes roving across the sea of harried faces as their ship took more fire from the dreadnought on their tail. The whole ship was a flurry of activity, people running to and away from the hive of top brass huddled around maps and strategic holos trying to salvage the Resistance as they knew it. Finn wasn’t sure if he was feeling Poe’s desperation or his own anymore, but it was overwhelming enough to numb him for a moment.

Another X Wing was hit, this one not as lucky as Black One, combusting mid-flight. It was the sixth one they’d lost since they evacuated D’Qar mere _hours_ ago—Had it really been so short a time since they were packing up the base? Since Finn had last gotten a proper look at Poe—since he’d really _held_ him? Since he’d kissed him and rolled them both over, tangling the sheets around their legs?

That had only been that _morning_ , and now his left side burned with phantom pain, and they’d lost _six_ pilots. The heavy artillery had been taken out by a blast of the dreadnought fifteen minutes into the ambush, and they were steadily leaking fuel—They were sitting ducks. 

Maybe that last memory would be all he had left of his pilot after today.

“They’ll be okay” a soft voice murmured. He turned his head only to see the medic who had been helping him stand before. Her smile was shaky, but she nodded like she believed it. “You have to tell yourself that—it’s the only way to not go crazy.”

Finn nodded back, unsure of what he could say without choking.

“I’m Rose. My sister’s Gold Leader.” 

“I’m Finn.” He gave her half a wobbly grin “Poe Dameron is my…”

“I know. One of my first days working the medbay was when Commander Dameron collapsed. You two were the talk of the whole base for a week.”

His heart fluttered at the memory, cut off abruptly when Kes’s sharp voice commanded “Poe, get everyone out of there—This is _too_ _much_ , Leia!”

“The jump to hyperspace would take more fuel than we can spare, Kes, we’ll be worse off just floating in space—”

“Then we need to get everyone out on the emergency transports!”

“With that monster in the sky? They’ll just be killed!”

“Leia— _please_. Bring in the pilots, or there won’t be enough of us left to fight in the first place.”

Silence hung thick and heavy between the General and her counselor, only broken by the chatter of Poe’s orders to the squadrons over the comms, before Leia finally nodded.

“Bring in the pilots, Commander Dameron.” She ordered, her voice strong and steady.

“ _Copy that.”_

A wash of relief nearly took Finn to his knees again, Rose grinning beside him.

“We can release all the spare parts and scrap metal we have—we’ll make ourselves harder to hit and get the Hell out of here.”

Leia almost cracked a smile at Kes’s words.

“Don’t push your luck, Vice Admiral—you almost sound like my husband.” she rolled her eyes before turning to anyone she could reach, disseminating the order to start packing up the supplies they could salvage and get down to the transport bay. “We’ll bring in the pilots and we’ll try to make the jump to hyperspace. We only abandon ship as a last resort.”

That was when a blast lit up the darkness outside the window, and a frantic voice sizzled through the comm.

 _“I’m hit!”_ a woman’s voice cried to Poe, and Finn could only guess which pilot it was—Rose gasped out a strangled type of sound, an X Wing with a gold stripe spiraling through the air. _“Poe, I can’t stabilize!”_

_“I’m on my way to you, Gold Leader—”_

_“Computer system’s going dark—Commander, there’s nothing you can do.”_

_“Paige--?”_

There was a moment of loaded silence, punctuated by bombs and screams and shouted orders. 

_“I have a sister—look out for her.”_ Even over the patchy reception of the comm link, the shake in the woman’s voice was unmistakable. _"General Organa, it’s been an honor. Long live the Republic.”_

Finn had always thought that moments like _that_ would come and go in slow motion, but the X Wing with the gold stripe hurdled through the air in real time. It was all too fast. Finn and Rose watched in helpless grief, Poe’s voice was stuttering over the comm, and Leia and Kes and the brass all stared on as Gold Leader -- _Paige_ \-- took the last vestiges of control she had over her burning ship, and aimed for the First Order’s command deck.

Rose screamed, doubling over as if she’d taken a blaster shot to the gut. Finn took that as his turn to hold his new friend up, gripping her around the waist to help her steady herself.

Seconds ticked by as the smoke billowed up from the crash site before the explosion really ignited. A whole section of the dreadnought disappeared behind a vast plume of smoke and fire, and the last cannon beneath the command deck was totally obliterated.

Leia was at his shoulder after several beats of shocked silence, only broken by Rose’s ragged sobs.

“She’ll stay up here with me—you and Kes go down to the hangar and meet up with our Commander.” She said “We can only afford to make one jump into hyperspace before we lose our fuel. It’ll get us away from this mess.”

Finn had forgotten that his feet were even under him, stumbling as he remembered how to move from the spot he’d been rooted to. He nodded dumbly before turning to follow Kes down to the returning pilots, the pain in his shoulder ebbing and flowing, getting stronger as the two of them jogged up to Black One.

Finn helped Poe down, holding his weight snugly to his side as he got accustomed to the ground under him again.

“You okay?” he breathed, the anxious vibration of the bond easing.

As soon as he was set to stand, Poe was pushing himself away and onto his own two feet, fuming “We should’ve never even been in the _kriffing_ air—where is she?” he demanded, already limping off the way they came. “What’s the plan now?”

“ _Your_ plan is to get this patched up—we’re making the jump to hyperspace, and we’ll start fixing up the ship once we can breathe again without The First Order hearing about it.” Kes jumped in, taking stock of his son’s bloodied shoulder and singed flight suit while Poe refused to pause, leaving Finn and his dad to scramble to catch up. He was a bit burned across his face, but his eyes were still wild from the fight.

“Poe, we should get down to the medbay and start spreading the word to ready the transports in case we need them—” Finn said breathlessly, rushing along beside Poe’s purposeful steps, BB-8 rolling around on their heels.

Kes was the one to grab his arm and force him to _stop_ —Finn felt another shock of pain rip through his shoulder and saw the color leave Poe’s face at the feeling “Poe, she’s under a lot of pressure—”

“Yeah? Well, so was I-- we _all_ were—in case you missed the heavy fire and losing _half_ our fleet. How am I supposed to ensure that my pilots don’t die in vain when I know they shouldn’t be in the air in the first place?”

“You’re right! I’m with you, but let’s not cause a scene _now_ —”

“No, _let’s_.”

And with that, he was ripping his arm back out of Kes’s grip and striding back down the corridor. Finn couldn’t say he disagreed with him, only shrugging when the older Dameron fixed him with a helpless look, before both of them made to follow Poe up to the Bridge—

When a sudden blast of heat and a tremor like an earthquake sent them all flying forward. Finn frantically patted out Kes’s flaming pant leg, searching wildly for Poe through the smoke, unable to breathe until he caught his eye.

The entire west hangar was destroyed. All those people that they had just passed by, who were just doing their duties. All those ships and supplies— _Black One_ —they were all mangled and destroyed. The acrid tang of blood and fire and the jarring feeling of a tear in the Force nearly made Finn gag. 

They were all gone. Fiery rubble had scattered through the hallway, and Finn helped Kes to stand while BB-8 nudged into Poe until he agreed to use the droid’s head as a support, getting his bad leg back under him.

“But we… we got the dreadnought. What was…?”

There was nothing to say. Poe’s mouth hung open, trying to find words for all of half a second before the urgency of the situation came rushing back into perspective, and they were running back up toward the Bridge. Poe was riding a wave of adrenaline, must’ve been, or his leg would’ve given out, or he would’ve passed out, or _something_. But he forged ahead, faster than any of them, his droid rolling on ahead and Finn and Kes just trying to keep up.

Finn, though, did a double take as they passed a window on their way.

“Um, guys?”

Kes heard him and turned, and Poe must’ve felt the terror and dread that Finn sent in waves through their bond, because he was jogging back to him in a heartbeat.

Either the First Order had discovered a way to make their ships magically regenerate from fatal damage, or…

“There’s a second dreadnought. And a third—we-we’ve got a whole _fleet_ out there!” he cried, whirling around to meet Poe and Kes’s matching wide-eyed gazes.

Before Poe could get a single word out, though, there was a tremendous shake that rippled through the whole ship. In the chaotic rush of rebels in the corridor, people were tumbling over with the force of the blast, gripping anything they could to stay upright, barely keeping track of their own breath, let alone their orders. Poe’s leg nearly gave out as the ground shook, and Finn took his waist and held him steady.

“ _Whoa_.” Finn breathed.

“Yeah, _whoa’s_ right—where were we hit this time?”

“If they busted the other fuel tank—” Kes shook his head.

“The fuel tank’s the least of our problems. We’ve gotta get everyone out of here before there’s no Resistance left.” Finn replied as Poe took off again toward the Bridge, leaving them both to trail along behind him. _Again_. Getting sick of being pushed away, Finn rolled his eyes, jogging up to the other man as his injuries finally started to slow him down.

The Bridge was in chaos.

The General was right in the thick of it, shouting orders as rebels rushed around her, packing up datapads and supplies and communicators. The three dreadnoughts loomed large in the wide window, slicing through the darkness of space, and Finn could feel the alarm bells of the Force lighting up all around him as he stared up at them.

Kes was beside him, clapping him on the shoulder as he breathed out long and hard “We’re gonna get through it. We’ll rebuild. But, right now, we need to _go_. C’mon, Kiddo.”

Poe was talking Leia’s ear off, clearly seething, gesticulating wildly and giving Finn another jolt of phantom pain through his shoulder. The General didn’t even look at him as she marched across the Bridge to the door, her mouth set in a grim, sour line and her eyes hard.

“— _ten_ pilots, General—”

“Those ten pilots all signed up for this cause the same as you, Commander. You’ll do well to remember that—”

“Well, _you’re_ not the one who’ll have to comm their families—”

The crack of her hand on Poe’s burned and bloodied cheek was lost in the din of the huge space, but Finn watched Kes tense and felt the sting of what must’ve been a Hell of a slap. She pointed a commanding finger right in Poe’s face, nearly forcing him to cross his eyes to see it.

“You do _not_ get to tell me that I _don’t_ _care_ about my fighters, _Dameron_.” Leia hissed, and Finn took that as his cue, meeting the two where they had stopped just ten feet shy of the threshold they had come from. Poe looked suitably cowed, but his jaw still worked and Finn could feel the shame and righteous anger still pounding through him. “Now, if you haven’t deemed me _completely_ untrustworthy, I have a mission for you both.”

Another blast rocked the ship, and they all scrambled for purchase on anything that would keep them standing. Leia paused, the color draining from her face and her eyes flicking to the window, as if she sensed something they didn’t.

The long, jagged scar of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber tingled and itched along Finn’s spine for the first time in weeks, and he rolled his shoulders to brush away the unsettling feeling.

They walked the rest of the way to the hall while Leia gave them their orders, and Finn was left with the distinct impression that she was corralling them away from the Bridge. He said nothing.

“General?” Kes prompted.

“To come back from this, we’ll need more than I can give alone. Commander, Lieutenant Finn—I need you to follow this map” she held out a familiar looking holodrive “to Rey and my brother. Inform them of the situation, and bring them with you to meet us on Crait.”

“What’ll you be doing?” Finn shouted over the pandemonium, and Leia smiled a little sadly.

“Evacuating the Bridge, scrambling the emergency transports into hyperspace to lay low, and reconvening on Crait.” She spoke urgently, her gaze still fixed on the guns just outside their window “The old undercover freighter is down at the edge of the east hangar—”

“We’ll be lucky to get that thing to even take off--!” Poe cried.

“You can fly anything, quit whining—and take this one with you.” She beckoned over to a blur of a person rushing by, catching her arm out of the stream of evacuees.

It was the medic, Rose. Her eyes were still puffy and bereft, but she looked determined and Finn smiled at her.

“This is Rose—she’s a medic, Dameron. You look like you could use one.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Poe griped.

“Yeah, but it’s worse than you say it is.” Finn cut in.

Leia huffed an exasperated sigh “If you won’t follow _my_ orders, maybe you’ll at least honor Gold Leader’s dying wish? _Commander?_ This is Paige Tico’s sister.”

There was another wash of shame that flooded their Force bond, and Poe looked as if he’d swallowed his tongue, nodding dumbly as Leia turned to her Vice Admiral.

“Kes, I want you to lead one of the transports—Chewie’s already down there, he’ll take the other one.”

He nodded “Then you’re coming with me to the transport bay right now. We don’t have time—”

“You Damerons are so pushy,” she teased, but it didn’t reach her eyes “I will be the last person off the Bridge—it’s my ship. You’ve got your orders, get out!”

Several things happened at once, just then. Finn could feel a shift in the Force, like the entire galaxy was tilting out of their favor.

Leia felt it too—felt _something_ , at least—because she turned around as if someone had called her name. Her eyes were soft and sad again, like she knew something no one else did as the First Order fleet took up the entire window of the Bridge.

He thought he saw her whisper something, but the moment was over too fast.

* * *

On the command deck of the dreadnought, Kylo Ren choked on an order. The Force tugged on his chest and reminded him of a far away smile, a hand in his hair… Once upon a time, he’d had a home, and a life, a dad and a _mom._

 _“Ben.”_ he could’ve sworn he heard, a whisper across time and space, sounding so _familiar._

“ _Well?”_ Hux snarled beside him “What’re you waiting for?”

It was a dare, it was a _test_ , and the rage bubbled up in his throat like bile—would they _ever_ stop testing him? Would he _ever_ be trusted?

“Fire when ready.” He growled, rooting his feet into the ground beneath him and feeling the blowback of the cannon fire as the Bridge of the resistance ship exploded into the void of space. The Force connection of his mother in his chest ripped itself apart and he swallowed hard as he blocked out the feeling and kept his eyes glued to the inferno.

He wouldn’t be tested again. He had nothing left to lose.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little shorter, but I wanted to get this piece out for you guys. I'm pretty happy with how this chapter turned out :) 
> 
> Luke is going to seem like a bit of a TLJ-brand grouchy asshole in this chapter, but don't worry, he won't stay that way. My introduction to Luke is through Rey's perspective and she's not particularly happy with him, and that will show in how he's described and interacted with. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the wonderfully sweet comments and encouragement! If you like this chapter, if you want to read more, please continue to comment and let me know! 
> 
> Enjoy <3

Luke Skywalker was an inconsistent, confusing man. The Force swirled around him like a thunderstorm, gray and tumultuous. He had secrets, and secrets on top of those secrets, and a soul _so_ guilt-ridden about those secrets that, when Rey sensed it, she nearly turned around and went back to Leia to be trained.

She was sorely tempted.

When she first arrived, he had reached out and examined the lightsaber she’d returned to him.

“Where did you get this?” he grumbled, squinting at her like he was trying to figure her out.

“Maz’s place—she told me it was yours.”

He scoffed, the wind in his weathered face as he looked right through her “It was my father's before me. Maz is mistaken—you should take it back to her. I have no use for lightsabers anymore.”

He tried to hand it back to her with his mechanical hand, but Rey made no move to accept it. She wouldn’t accept _this_. “Your sister sent me. I need a teacher—”

“To teach you what? Leia could teach you herself.”

“She’s a bit busy—if you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war on. She sent me to you because we _need_ you.” _We have been needing you_ , was what she didn’t say, but Rey was quick to figure that she couldn’t hide her thoughts from Luke Skywalker.

He looked as if he’d tasted something sour, his lips pursed and jaw tight while he scanned his eyes over her one last time. A little bloom of her own hope wrestled with the thunderclouds between her and her potential new master, feeling a raw spike of guilt in him at the mention of Leia.

And then, Luke Skywalker-- hero of the Rebellion, the last true Jedi—dropped his father's lightsaber into the grass, turned on his heel, and walked away, leaving Rey gaping after him.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a wealth of experience with people walking away—she was more surprised by the people like Leia, or Poe, or Finn. The people who fought, and cared, and _stayed_ … As much as he hated Finn’s penchant for grabbing her hand and dragging her along, she knew he wouldn’t leave her behind. Finn had come back for her, again and again. He'd saved her from Ren, he'd brought in new friends to help-- Finn had decided to fight when he could have run away, and yet Luke _kriffing_ Skywalker sat idle on a mountain top when there were so many people who _needed_ him.

All that talk about the myth of _Skywalker_ , and this was what she got? The people she'd only just left were worth ten of him. 

The _galaxy_ needed him. And if he wouldn’t answer that call, the least he could do was train her to do it _for_ him.

It had taken time to wear him down. Ten long days.

The night she finally managed it, it was raining sideways, leaving the thousands of stone steps slick and dangerous. Rey sat sentinel outside Luke’s warmly lit room, frigid and soaked to the bone.

When she had first left to find Luke after Starkiller, she remembered Poe shaking his head. “ _Careful—that man has a tendency to get people into a world of pain._ ” He had looked a little tense, a little dark around his kind eyes in a way she couldn’t place at the time.

Once she learned about Jakku, and Kes, and Shara—that all made sense. Rey had brushed off her friend when he said it, but, while sitting in the rain on Ahch-To, she felt herself steadily coming to a boiling rage.

 _Poe was righter than he knew_ , she fumed, _How many people across this galaxy have given up their lives and families and peace to fight against the First Order? What about Leia, what about Chewie and R2 and 3PO and Han— Why didn’t Luke Skywalker fight for his family, if nothing else!?_

It wasn’t until she finally broke down, pounding on the door of his little hovel and shouting “Han Solo is _dead!_ Kylo Ren _killed_ your friend—don’t you _care_ _at_ _all?!”_ that the door finally swung open.

He had looked tired. Luke Skywalker always looked tired, but at that moment he seemed to have aged ten years. It sucked the breath out of Rey and left her standing dumbly in the threshold.

“You know _nothing_ about what I care about.” He snapped, deflating with the words rather than growing in his indignance.

Then, he opened the door wide and beckoned her in.

“How d’you know about Han?” He started, pouring her a bowl of something hot.

“I was there.” She deadpanned, savoring the heat of the bowl in her hands, not even giving a thought to what was in it “How do _you?”_

“I felt it through the Force.” a wave of grief overflowed the little hut—she had only heard stories about Luke and Han and Leia from the days of the first Rebellion, but she thought of her own friends and had some idea.

Her anger drained away—there was something so resigned and lost about him.

“You knew he’d died and you did nothing—”

“I knew he’d died.” He repeated. His gaze was hard and final.

All Luke had been doing, all that time, was _meditate_. He had been focusing with all he had on observing the Force until he could feel every moment shifting from one to the other. He may have felt every death in the Resistance as though it were his own. She didn’t get the _point_ of it all until he taught her—until Rey found herself meditating on the Force herself. She used that time to piece together her understanding of her master, to try to separate the man from the myth. 

After their "little field trip" to Yavin and the Force Tree, and after their pitstop home-- after meeting Kes Dameron, specifically-- she thought she got it. Poe had been right when he talked about Luke, but Luke knew it. He was in exile because he thought of himself as a protector, and he didn't know how to protect people anymore-- not after the deaths of people like Shara Bey. 

But, that instance was only one tiny drop in the pool of guilt that Luke had yoked himself to. It was deeper, it was a fundamental shift of personality from hope to cynicism. 

Rey found herself cutting him some slack, despite her best efforts to hold out. 

* * *

She could _feel_ the Resistance—something catastrophic. It was like the vibrations from the Force that connected her to her friends, to the cause, to the galaxy… a dissonant, ugly chord rippled across time and space to Rey’s chest.

She just _knew_ it was them.

The ground came out from under her when it tore through her, falling onto the damp stone floor of the cove where Luke had found the strongest Force connection. Rey gasped in a desperate breath as the fire and blood flashed in her mind’s eye, scrambling to stand and make for the stairs—

“You aren’t finished yet.” Luke stood directly in her path, taking up the whole of the threshold.

“The Force, my _friends_ , I—”

“Have to go?” he scoffed, but his gaze softened before long “I’ve been where you are, Rey—I _failed_ , but you don’t have to. Your friends will be fine if destiny wills it that way--

"And if they’re not?"

"Then, there’s nothing you can do.”

“But—”

“Finish your training, Rey—the ways of the Jedi don’t allow for this level of attachment. They don’t let you… love. But _I_ can teach you how to manage and balance your powers with your feelings for the people you care about-- for that you have to _stay.”_

“That’s easy for you to say—”

“ _Nothing_ about this is easy!”

She swallowed her tongue as her master’s shout rang through the chamber, leaving them in tense silence only punctuated by the waves of Ahch-To’s churning sea.

“Didn’t you feel it?” she finally murmured.

“Yes.” He breathed out, long and slow, closing his eyes and bowing his head.

He hadn’t just felt it—he _knew_ something she didn’t. Another wave of guilt came in like the tide, strangling the space, and finally something clicked in her mind.

It wasn’t until that day-- months into her training-- that she came to understand. Luke Skywalker wasn't hiding. He was paying penance. He was grieving some type of loss; he wasn’t distrusting of Rey or anybody else—the person he didn’t trust was _himself_.

The question that remained was _why?_

“What do you mean about… balancing my feelings?” she deflated, her heart screaming for her to go while her feet stayed rooted to the ground.

Tension seeped out of Luke’s shoulders, leaving him with half a relieved smile as he replied.

“Ever heard of the Gray Jedi?”

* * *

It had all happened so fast.

Poe only saw the beam of cannon fire heading straight for them because he was already facing the window, able to see it from his place in the threshold of the Bridge. The Force lit up in his chest like an alarm, quickening his breath as he shot an arm out to grab hold of the General—who had just walked further into the blast zone, toward all the other people she still intended to evacuate, when she paused. She furrowed her brow, turned to the wide window like she sensed something too delicate for the rest of them to feel.

 _“LEIA!”_ he cried, lunging forward and pulling his commanding officer back from the impact of the blast just as the Bridge exploded into shrapnel and fire.

They were blown back into the hallway. Poe flew like a ragdoll, gripping Leia’s hand with every ounce of strength left in him as they collided into the far wall and his vision popped with stars. He swore he could feel his brain _bounce_ in his skull, making his stomach flip.

Leia’s weight was limp across his bad side, both of them sprawled on the ground.

His ears rung from the combined effects of the head trauma and the sonic boom of the impact, but he was vaguely aware of someone calling his name as his faculties came back to him.

“— _Poe, Poe!_ C’mon, eyes on me.” It was Dad. It was Dad—where was Finn? “That’s it, Kiddo. You just got your bell rung—we need to get the General down to the east hangar. Rose’ll look after her. C’mon--”

“F’n?” he slurred, his lips and tongue not cooperating with his question.

“I’m right here, Poe.”

There were hands on him, pulling him up to standing, and Poe knew they were his, letting out a shaky breath as the Force bond struck a relieved chord in his chest. Finn’s face swam into his vision, bruised and bloodied and covered in soot.

The General looked ragged and pale and terrifyingly _dead_ , slumped between Kes and Rose’s shoulders—Poe swallowed the urge to vomit, tasting blood in his mouth, and gripped Finn a bit tighter.

The route to the east hangar was a blur, and it was all Poe could do to keep his eyes open. Focusing on their connection, he used his last few brain cells to try to parse out whether Finn was also injured, or if all those aches and pains were Poe’s alone.

“How… How many pe’ple were still on the…” he tried his hardest to enunciate, tried to keep his feet under him so Finn didn’t have to _entirely_ drag his ass to the ship.

“Pretty much every high-ranking _anybody_ … Admiral Ackbar, Vice Admiral Holdo… Kes and Leia might be the only ones left, we won’t know until we see who’s already on the transports…” Finn replied breathlessly. The east hangar was in sight, going in and out of focus to Poe’s weary gaze. He never thought he’d say it, but he couldn’t _wait_ to get some bacta on his head. And just about everywhere else.

The ground shook underneath their feet with another hit, and Poe staggered along like he’d had ten shots of Likstro.

The gangway groaned as it opened, and he pushed himself to lean against the unreliable old bucket of bolts while Finn helped secure the General inside. Kes was out of breath, his eyes scanning over him, and Poe remembered with a pang that he wasn’t coming with them.

“You’ll nev…” he trailed off, reaching out a heavy hand toward his dad. “Come with us, y’won’t make it, if—”

“I’ve got a job to do, just like you.” He cupped the back of Poe’s aching head and pulled him close for a moment that Poe could have lived in, “I’ll be fine. Listen, Son, I _know_ Leia, and you don’t have to agree with her, but it will _save_ _your_ _life_ to trust her—”

Another tremor shook them, and there was a crash somewhere in the distance that Poe couldn’t place.

“Save y’r _own_ life, get outta here…”

Kes just smiled, his eyes watering from smoke or tears, Poe didn’t know. It made his hands tremble, his brow sweating—or maybe that was bleeding.

Their assigned ship was the small, non-descript little dingy that they used for supply runs in the Outer Rim. It was for laying low, but part of Poe’s bruised brain just wanted to take it and smash it right through the First Order fleet like Gold Leader had done—

“—are you good to fly?” Finn popped his head down the gangway, leaving Kes bug-eyed.

“Is he _good_ to _fly?_ He can barely keep his eyes open!” he cried, and something was creaking in the bowels of what was left of the Resistance ship. They didn’t have time for this—

“C’n still fly better’n any a’you—I’ll get us into hyperspace…” he made himself say.

“Finn, he’s too concussed—” a voice that must’ve been Rose argued.

“Are _you_ a pilot, Rose? Cus’ _I’m_ not a pilot.”

Poe sent a little pulse of gratitude through the Force bond, swallowing the wave of nausea that coursed through him when he did—it was worth it when Finn took his hand and squeezed before he started to tug him gently up the gangway.

He was out of his dad’s embrace, then, yelling out _“See you on Crait!”_ as they broke apart and headed into the belly of the clunky freighter.

Dad just sent him a salute and a wink that twisted his heart.

By the time Poe had stumbled into the cockpit and readied them for takeoff, Kes had disappeared into the billowing clouds of smoke and debris.

It simultaneously felt like a thousand years and half a second before they were in the air, Poe’s hands only slightly clumsy as he fumbled with the controls—he breathed deep, ignoring the rhythm of continuous pain that saturated his entire body. He let the Force guide him, with Finn in the co-pilot seat.

They were just about to hit hyperspace, the First Order fleet still distracted behind them.

That was when the last remnants of the Resistance ship finally blew—collapsing in on itself like a dying star, an inferno taking up the space where it had been. Something in Poe flipped and clenched, unable to trust anything beyond Finn’s hand on his good shoulder.

“Did you see the transports get out?”

Poe started to shake his head—big mistake. He let out a groan he couldn’t suppress, feeling like his skull was full of rattling marbles.

“It’s gonna be okay—we can both feel that, right?” Finn tried to sound reassuring, but Poe knew he was saying it for himself as much as him.

He punched the autopilot after they were safely away and let out a long sigh, black spots sending his vision into a tunnel.

For all they knew, they were the last living resistance in the galaxy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I LOVE this chapter, but it was really hard to write, and I'll tell you why. 
> 
> Let's start with this: I am not a Reylo shipper. Noooooo thank you. But, I needed to make Kylo the right balance of shittiness to sympathetic/manipulated pawn in a larger game. I still intend to ultimately "redeem" him, but the thing I've found about Kylo is that his redemption arc isn't a redemption arc as much as it's a cautionary tale: he chased the attention and sympathy he got from the dark side, he wanted to feel big and powerful and didn't consider the consequences until he was in over his head, and it ultimately killed him to try a right his wrongs. The moral of his story is about being true to your convictions, stand up for what you know is wrong when you see it, because if you wait too long, the only way to clean up your mess will be dying for it. 
> 
> Kylo is manipulated and a manipulator, but I don't consider him a victim. He's a complacent fascist-- it makes him feel powerful and needed, even if he doesn't agree with the values he's supporting, and that makes him just as bad as Snoke and Hux and Phasma. I have so many thoughts about this little shit, and I want to make clear that this chapter includes no intentional romantic undertone. Rey is swayed by his manipulative tactics, and it could be read that way, so I'm just saying that straight out, but it's clear by the end of the chapter that Rey is getting herself together. 
> 
> Alright! Other than that, I hope you enjoy! I haven't changed a ton of Rey and Luke and Kylo's stories from the movie-- a couple big key points, but the general arc is similar. It's Poe and Finn and Rose and stuff that really get changed around (literally they're entire plot is different lol), but we won't see them again until the next chapter! 
> 
> ***A lot of this has changed! the broad strokes are still accurate, but hahaha I've changed A LOT of Rey's plot as of now. And my Kylo arc has changed. You'll see! ;)
> 
> Thank you for reading and reviewing-- you guys make this all happen with your kind words and encouragement! So, please continue to let me know what you think! <3

Nights on Ahch-To weren’t cold, exactly, but the wind whipped up off the sea and weaved through the mountains at violent speeds, and Rey’s robes tangled around her legs as she followed Luke along the labyrinth of steps and trails through the heart of their island. His back was tense, his rigid posture and the swirl of the Force between them giving away his uncertainty about what they were doing, despite his determined steps leading the way. Rey watched him carefully as they came up to a steep path cutting deep into the dark night.

She couldn’t see a thing, relying on the Force to guide her feet until their path opened up into an impossible clearing.

In here, the air was still. The wind that dogged Rey every moment since she arrived, wherever she went—it was gone. Every blade of grass, though, seemed to gently sway, as if individually suspended from the earth beneath it, and at the top of the space, there was a tree. It was an old, gnarled thing, and she thought it suited Luke well.

“Is that a Force Tree?” she asked.

He gave her a rare smile “Not in the traditional sense, no. The last of those is still only on Yavin, as far as I’m aware. But, I don’t get out much anymore.” 

She was still reeling at the idea of _Luke Skywalker_ making a _joke_ , when Rey realized it wasn’t just a tree, it was a _room_ —the trunk swung away to reveal a small, dark space, riddled with carefully organized trinkets and books. She ran her fingertips along the spines, feeling the rough, old covers.

“What is this, Master Skywalker?”

“It’s the last of the Jedi relics—the things I’ve managed to collect over the years after…” he paused, that guilty exhaustion creeping up and taking his smile away again “after I made my mistakes and went into exile. I tried to be useful here, and collect what was left of my people. Keep them out of the wrong hands…” he gestured vaguely to the space.

There was so much energy wrapping around her and running through her, it almost felt as if she were meditating. The Force was so strong in these objects, they each seemed to call to her in turn.

Then, she saw it. A lightsaber hilt, slightly melted, its kyber center tenderly placed beside it as if it was the most beloved thing in the galaxy—

“Don’t touch that.”

Luke shoved a book into her hands as they reached out toward the old lightsaber, commandeering her attention.

Taking one last look at the glinting kyber and the melted hilt, Rey swallowed her thousands of questions to study the ancient cover in her hands. She could feel the millennia of hands that had touched it before her, the peace and the wars it had seen—the weight of it was solid and somehow comforting, in a way Rey hadn’t known a book could be.

“This book has caused conflict.” She observed.

Luke nodded “It has also ended it.” He put his weathered hand over hers and held her gaze “These are the writings of Jolee Bindo—a Gray from the times of the Old Republic. This is the only piece of him left in the galaxy.”

“But what _is_ a Gray?”

"They were Jedi—Jedi that walked the line between the Light and the Dark without becoming corrupted by their power. They kept up with no Council, they followed their own code of ethics… They didn’t limit themselves in the way that traditional Jedi did, in the matters of personal relationships or in the Force powers they practiced. Everything from healing to Force Lightning…”

“But, how do they know they haven’t been…”

“Turned? To turn to the Dark side, you have to use your powers for destruction—fueling yourself through anger, greed, or fear.” There was that guilt again, clenching her heart like it was her own “You feel yourself sliding before you fall, and you can always return. The Gray Jedi are masters of balance. Their use of Dark-aligned powers comes from compassionate emotion and deep understanding of self, not the hate of the Sith or even the detachment of the Jedi.” He put a hand on her shoulder, steering her out of the hollow tree and back into the clear night. They sat side by side, and for the first time she didn’t want to fight him. Rey wanted to be guided by him—there was none of the distrust and animosity that she had grown so used to.

“There is a downside.” He met her gaze and held it steadily, mouth drawn in a stern line “Training in the ways of the Gray Jedi make you highly susceptible to Dark side influence until you get the hang of this. So, you have to ask yourself the most important question: who are you? D’you know?”

Her parents had abandoned her—they never came home. Her name was a mystery, her little shelter was a mosaic of scraps and sand. She could still feel the scream tearing from her chest when they’d left her behind, hear the roar of the ship that stole her life from her.

Who was she?

Her lip trembled and she bit down to stop it, blinking back the heat in her eyes.

“I… I don’t know.”

Luke breathed out a long sigh that sounded too much like disappointment for her to bear, and she was prepared for him to cast her away, to give up like everyone else had, even after all these months—

“Well, then. We should find out.”

“You can do that?” she couldn’t contain the bounding hope the swelled in her chest at the thought—the thought of knowing.

Luke only nodded “There are ways.”

Her exhale shuddered, and one tear slipped down her cheek.

“I can train you in the ways of the Gray Jedi—it was a great solace to me, when I came here. But I have one condition.”

Taking both of her shoulders, he turned her to look him square in the face, his piercing gaze studying every atom of her.

“Every time you feel tempted to the Dark side—this can take many forms, so be wary of anything you feel out of the ordinary—you will tell me. We can work through these things together, but I need you to trust me.”

Rey chewed the inside of her lip as she thought, breathing into the sense-memories of the book—feeling flashes of blood and pain, but also joy and _family_ … A type of Jedi that doesn’t mean being alone. That doesn’t mean sacrificing connection.

“When do we get started?”

He squeezed her shoulders and broke into a true grin as he said “I won’t fail you, Rey.”

She believed him.

* * *

The dream came with no warning.

It was a pulse behind her eyes, flashes of images and visceral feeling. The panic coursed through her, her veins feeling as if they were twisted unnaturally, curling around her bones of their own accord— _Poe, bleeding from a deep gash in his head, unconscious… the cove where she meditated, empty and battered by the high tide waves, swirling with a cyclone of gale-force wind… Finn, strapped down to some dark contraption, back in the hands of the First Order. Someone was screaming, someone was calling his name… The shadows of the cove again, with the flashes of red light and the smell of ozone… she could feel the grip of hands on her tiny arms, just a little girl sold to be a scavenger while her family flew away_ —

When she bolted upright in her tiny room on Ahch-To, it was with a strangled chest and her stomach flipping, tying itself in knots. There was a pull at the very center of her that tugged her from her bed and up to her feet, barely getting her grip around Anakin’s borrowed lightsaber and not even stopping for her shoes as she jerked her door open and went out into the night.

She was unsure why she was headed where she was going, but the pull within her felt like the Force. She needed to _focus_ on this feeling, she needed to _understand_ this dream.

It wasn’t until her bare, frozen feet hit the wet stone of the familiar cove that she could sense anything beyond her own urgency.

This tug at her chest didn’t feel like the Force as much as it felt like a _leash_. She was being led, but not by anything natural…

She had a very bad feeling about this. She should’ve woken up Luke.

There was a man in the center of the space, head bowed, wrapped in a black cloak, knelt toward the sea.

“… I won’t fail you, Grandfather… but, even now, with both of them gone, I still feel this call to the Light... I can’t go, not after all we’ve worked for…”

“What’re _you_ doing here?” she growled, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end as she recognized the mumbling voice. 

Kylo Ren whipped around to face her when Rey’s voice echoed around the cove walls, his dark eyes wild. He stood to his full height and she swallowed, knowing he’d dwarf her and appreciating the distance between them. The memory of Starkiller was too fresh. Even the memory of his Force probe into her mind, which usually seemed so distant, flashed in her mind’s eye, full of pain and fear and him so _terribly_ close to her.

She flexed one of her clammy hands and wrapped her fingers around the lightsaber at her hip.

He had left Finn in a coma for weeks. He had killed Han Solo. He had tortured Poe, and broke his mother’s heart, and abandoned the Light—and for _what?_

“Where is here?” he asked, his voice was a deep monotone but she could hear the slight tremble within, feel the genuine confusion. “What’re _you_ doing _here?”_

“This isn’t real.” She breathed, the realization dawning on her—Ren couldn’t see her surroundings. Just like she couldn’t see his. “You aren’t real.”

Rey didn’t relinquish her hold on the lightsaber, but she felt some of her fear loosen in her gut to know that this was somehow a dream. Was it? It had to be somehow fabricated, but how? And _why?_

With no guarantee that they couldn’t still hurt each other, Rey remained rooted in her spot, not moving closer. Neither did he.

“You must be very strong with the Force to be able to project yourself like this.” Ren observed, and it was nearly a _compliment_. Rey raised a brow, creating a mask of disinterest to hide her rage.

“I have as much control over this as you.” She ground out.

“So, the Force is doing this alone?” the wind in the cove buffeted his hair, and Ren turned into it “It’s cold where you are.”

It was just an observation, not _outwardly_ threatening— but, the urge to press the button on her lightsaber was suddenly overwhelming. Rey doubled down in her stance. She refused to give in to her fear, she would not back away.

Her feet ached with the cold, wet and red and starting to go numb. Ahch-To wasn’t actually cold—but between the water and the wind and the cool night, Rey was suppressing a shiver. Of course, someone like _Ren_ would consider it cold—he felt one breeze against his face and decided that he was an authority on climate.

“Where I am is none of your business--” Ren took a step toward her then, and she cut herself off, her heart leaping into her throat.

“You’re afraid.”

“I’m _not_ af—”

Kylo raised a gloved hand, quick as lightning, and sent a rock splitting from the cove wall and flying toward Rey. Her eyes widened, her finger releasing her lightsaber with a hiss and a buzz, leaping into the air with the power of the Force propelling her upward and over the flying boulder as she drove her blade through it and cut it in half.

She landed silently, ready for another blow, ready to _fight_ —what _was_ this? It couldn’t be _just_ a dream.

“You’re someplace rocky… and I can smell the sea.” He continued, his monotone sending a cold dread into her gut—her hand trembled, and she gripped the hilt of her lightsaber tighter to stop it. “You’ve continued your training.” He observed blandly, but everything he said was somehow a threat, somehow a manipulation to get her to tell him where she was, and the idea of him coming anywhere near her made her sick—

“I have a new teacher.” She ground out, strengthening her stance and glaring across the room at him. “A legendary teacher.”

“Luke Skywalker?” he spat, his silky tone and feigned indifference suddenly gone. A current of wild rage filled the Force around them, the echoes of his anger reverberating into her own chest—it was painful. It burned like _acid_ , it—

“What do _you_ know about _Luke_ _Skywalker?”_ he growled, and she suddenly felt as if she were shackled back to that interrogation chamber on Starkiller, the wrath coming off Ren in waves and creating an erratic, dangerous energy—like a bomb. “Do you know what your _legendary_ _teacher_ is capable of?”

Rey stood her ground despite a gnawing dread—what could Luke have possibly done? How could he have possibly… Guilt swirled around Luke Skywalker like a storm cloud wherever he went, and she had wanted to figure it out for so many months—why had he abandoned the world to become some hermit? A distrust for her master that she hadn’t felt since before visiting Yavin reared up in her, sweeping through her veins like a virus.

Kylo’s scarred face was twisted into a vicious, bitter smile, stepping toward her until there was barely an arm’s length between them—he could reach out and touch her if he dared, and Rey raised her lightsaber between them.

“Not a step closer.” She hissed, her jaw tense even as she took in the strangely pitiful look of him up close. His face was illuminated by the blue light holding them apart, everything around them dark and damp and cold.

It felt like being back on Starkiller-- he was so near, looming over her, only a lightsaber between them—but this time, they hadn’t crossed blades. The only one openly threatening anyone was _her_. 

_“… I still feel this call to the Light... I can’t go, not after all we’ve worked for_ …” That’s what he had said.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to know who made me what I am?” his dark eyes glistened—were those tears? “I’ll know if you lie, I can _feel_ your curiosity.” What could Luke have possibly done? She reached out tentatively through the Force, and she could _feel_ the Light in him. He was so full of conflict, he was lost.

Wasn’t that how Vader was? Luke had said that he was able to sway his father into the Light, that Anakin Skywalker had used his last breaths to fight back against the Empire.

Kylo Ren was full of conflict. She pitied him. She maybe even _empathized_. 

She extinguished her lightsaber with a hiss, taking a healthy step back for safety’s sake as she did. Part of her was screaming for her to run, to not listen, to get out—

“REY, _STOP!”_

A new voice echoed into the cove, a wave crashing onto the stone, soaking her through to the skin and washing the shape of Kylo away like a mirage on the sands of Jakku. She blinked as if she was opening her eyes for the first time, waking from sleep—had she been dreaming? How else could that have happened?

She whirled around, facing the severe expression of her master in the threshold with a hard stare of her own.

He finally appeared just as Ren was about to reveal his secret—how convenient. Just as she was about to finally get to the core of his guilt, and suddenly, there he was—

 _“What did you do?”_ she choked on the words, strangled by the mistrust that she hadn’t felt in weeks “Luke, what did you _do_ to him?”

Luke only sighed, dropping the hand he had extended to bring up the wave “I failed him.” 

* * *

“He’s manipulating you—Rey, this is the way the Dark side works!” he cried “I feel Snoke’s presence trying to worm its way into you. You have to calm down—"

“Ever since I came here, I knew you were hiding from _something_ — _what did you do?”_

Her heart was pounding, still gripping the hilt of Anakin’s lightsaber even though the vision of Ren was long since gone.

Luke was standing in front of her with a drawn expression, his hands up in a half-hearted surrender. His blue eyes pierced into her, and she _wanted_ to trust him, but her gut was twisted and she had felt Ren’s anger like it was her own—so _corrosive_ , so painful.

No wonder he was the way he was.

“I nearly tried to kill him.” Luke finally forced out.

Stunned silence reigned, wind whipping their robes and her feet numb “Rey, there’s more to it than what he says. Come inside, you’re shivering—”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” she blurted out, unable to stop the words spilling out of her with the overflow of her rage, her fear—she should have never let her guard down, she should have had Leia train her—

He took her by her shoulders and refused to let go, keeping her still even as she tried to tear herself away.

“I _failed!_ I failed them _all_ , Rey—that’s why I’m here. But if you’ll listen to me… It’s _more_ than that—” he stumbled through the words, desperately fighting for her attention.

Her hands trembled; The Force was rebelling in her chest but she didn’t know what it was telling her—something was _wrong_. She could feel the tears on her face, her mind getting more clouded.

“Focus on my voice, Rey. They’re getting in your head, you’re getting confused. The Sith are counting on you getting scared, starting to panic—this is what I warned you about. Think of your friends! Remember what Ren has done to them—”

Rey took a shuddering breath, trying to smooth out the harried edges of her Force energy. She thought of Finn holding her hand, and the peaceful rhythm of working on the Falcon with Poe. The three of them had cobbled together something that felt _safe_ , and every time they’d been in danger or lost their way, it was Ren on the other side of No Man’s Land, trying to tear Rey away from that little family she had been able to create.

She felt a bit less like she was going to throw up when she opened her puffy eyes to see Luke looking back at her. His forehead was creased with worry and his eyes were shadowed with such _shame_.

He had been where she was once. He was tempted by the Dark side, too.

“ _Why?”_ she rasped, finally breathing again “Why did you try to kill him?”

“Come inside first— you’re soaking wet. And where are your shoes?” He fussed, guiding her off to the small hut that he had sat her down in all those months ago, when she was desperate to start this journey.

It seemed laughable now. 

Once she was warm and drying by the fire, a pair of thick socks slid onto her feet and her lightsaber still loosely held in her hand, Luke sat down beside her with a heavy sigh.

“Leia was concerned about Ben’s… capacity for _influence_. We all have choices to make, Rey, and we all also have circumstances that are out of our control. But Ben seemed to conflate the two—the Dark side was corrupting him, and Leia sent him to my temple hoping I could help combat Snoke’s hold on his mind. He was young, but he was too old for me to undo _all_ that had been done.” Luke looked down and studied his weathered hands, mechanical and flesh, flexing his fingers idly. He swallowed hard before he continued “I failed her. I failed everyone, I had always been the one to come through… but I faced my greatest adversary when I looked into his mind and saw it all for myself.”

“So… So, you tried to _kill_ your own _nephew?”_

He let out a hopeless noise that was nearly a sob, shaking his head “It never truly came to that, it was… a moment of weakness. I had gone to his room at my temple—I felt Snoke’s presence growing stronger, beyond what I could help. It wasn’t like Vader, when I could sense my ability to turn him, when I could feel the Light in our connection. Ben was being twisted into something else, going where I couldn’t reach him. I could _see_ the future, all he would _do_ , the history he would _repeat_ , the lives he’d _destroy_ … I released my lightsaber in that moment and felt like the Force was guiding my hand. We had sacrificed _so_ _much_ for this New Republic, to be _free_ of the Empire, and I could do nothing to stop it re-growing right under my nose—” His blue gaze rested on Rey, pleading in a way she’d never thought he could be. He looked young and afraid.

“I realized what I was doing a moment too late—I had forgotten the most essential elements of my training, was tempted by the Dark side in the very act of protecting the Light. Ben woke up and reacted immediately. I was crushed under the roof of his room, knocked out. When I woke up…”

He was silent, hand over his mouth and his shoulders hunched from the weight of the galaxy, the weight of a collapsed roof that he’d never gotten out from under—not really, at least.

“He’d destroyed the temple. My _students_ … I didn’t see what happened, but—but, they’d been _butchered_. Every last one of them—all wounds committed with a lightsaber. I could feel the sense of betrayal and confusion and hate still in the air, and I knew what he’d done. They were his peers, his _friends_. That was when Ben Solo became Kylo Ren.” Luke sighed out a long breath “And I couldn’t stop him. I failed.”

Things made sense, the tables turning in Rey’s mind “That’s when you went into exile, and found the ways of the Gray Jedi.” She remarked, knowing it to be true.

Luke nodded with a rueful twist of his lips “It was comforting to read about the others—Jedi who found power and enlightenment in understanding the nuance between Dark and Light, emotion and reason, good and bad. If I’d only learned these ways earlier, I could’ve taught them to Ben, we could’ve changed everything…”

A swell of emotion ran through her, strong and beyond her full understanding—something she knew to be true, somehow “Don’t _say_ that.” Luke’s eyes widened at her harsh tone, but Rey was already talking again “You said it yourself: we all have choices. Kylo Ren didn’t have to _kill anyone_. He didn’t have to take your mistake and use it as an excuse to commit a massacre and align himself with evil.” She didn't mention what she'd heard Ren say, she didn't think about how she had felt the Light in him-- it had been so marred. So tarnished that no one but him could even begin to clean the blood away. 

He’d almost _had_ her. Snoke and Ren and the Dark side had almost manipulated her right into their grasp. It made her sick with shame, panic rearing up again at the thought of losing her control of _who_ _she_ _was_.

Luke took one of her hands in both of his and squeezed. It sent a pulse of comforting energy into her core, and she looked back to him. He was smiling—his eyes red-rimmed and dogged by ghosts.

They had all been tempted. They had all made their mistakes. But, Kylo Ren would _not_ be one of Rey’s. **  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER IS LONG! 
> 
> It's long, but it's good. I made Finn a bad pilot-- like, he's learned a little from Poe, he managed to use the TIE to shoot while Poe flew, but HE'S REALLY NOT A TRAINED PILOT. He's just smart. and We're gonna get a lot of good Finn POV here, so let me know if you like it <3 Shoot me a comment, tell me what you think, I love hearing from you!
> 
> *** I wrote this totally sober, but I'm a little tipsy posting haha so I hope this note made sense <3

It was a small ship; one Finn had only ever been in once before. It was full of strange noises that set his teeth on edge—the engine let out a periodic, nasal-type of sound like a wheeze. The hyperdrive chugged in a worrisome way that Finn didn’t remember from the last time he’d been there. The controls blinked and whirred by themselves as if they were turning themselves off and on, off and on—it didn’t really inspire confidence. Especially since, unless it was a TIE fighter under dire circumstances, Finn didn’t know a lugnut from a teaser wrench, and Poe’s brain was more or less shot for the moment.

The cockpit was barely large enough for the pilot and copilot seats, let alone the other seatbelts strung up on the back wall. The seats there were so tiny, they were practically ledges to lean on, rather than sit.

This was part of why Finn had elected to sit on the floor of the main cabin—he was close enough to the threshold of the cockpit that he could keep an eye on it, but Poe had set up them up as well as he could and punched the autopilot. They _should_ be fine, as long as the noises didn’t mean anything serious.

The other reason for sitting on the floor was to cradle Poe’s bruised and bloodied head in his lap while he slept. The bacta bandages were doing their work, so Rose said he could sleep as long as he was monitored. She said they’d wake him up every hour to check his cognition, her reassuring smile not reaching her eyes. They were still red-rimmed and glistening, her hands still a little shaky as she injected the bacta straight into the sleeping commander’s injured shoulder and knee.

Finn winced with the sympathetic sting in his own joints, experimenting with what little training Leia had given them on how to block each other’s pain in their bond.

It didn’t work.

“The bacta’s going to make him pretty drowsy—that on top of a concussion like his, he’ll be pretty hard to keep awake. We’ll just have to keep an eye on him, wake him up every once in a while—it’s her I’m worried about. Her back is a mess of shrapnel…”

“Are any of them deep?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.

She shrugged her way through a vague gesture “Nothing that garners immediate attention, but what about internal damage? That’s harder for me to gauge.”

He had never even considered General Leia Organa to be a person that _could_ die—she was such a presence. A constant fixture in the lives of the resistance fighters, acting in any role that needed filling. She could be found in the mess hall serving up whatever rations there were that day, directing infantry drills so one of her subordinates could have an afternoon off. She took night patrols, and did dishes, and never wavered in her stiff upper lip in the face of their impossible war.

She was essential.

In the First Order, the idea of a superior officer being anything other than a stoic paragon of military intimidation was beyond thinking. Finn had never even seen Phasma without her helmet. He had never felt anything but the cold repression of the Finalizer’s dark, sleek walls, and the rigid structure of orders and duties, drills and propaganda.

He had felt so welcome, so _free_ in the Resistance that Finn had forgotten how it felt to be ruled by fear at his most basic level. Don’t stand out, don’t get too close to anyone, _don’t_ get sent to re-education—they used to be the laws of living.

Because of Poe, and Rey, and _Leia_ , and Kes— Finn’s life was _his_. He had something to fight for. Leia had never been a person, she was _hope_.

It wasn’t until that day that Finn found himself smacked in the face with proof of their fearless leader’s humanity—her risky call sending out the pilots, and the massive losses they suffered because of it, and then the explosion on the Bridge.

He could barely bring himself to look at her limp body in the small bunk, looking so frail, older than she ever had.

Leia looked _dead_.

He spent most of his time watching Poe, instead. Every once in a while, his nose would scrunch up in that way it did when he slept. His cheeks were still rosy—lightly burned, he logically knew, but he was still _alive_. He wasn’t ashen pale like Leia. He wasn’t even shaky and scraped up like Finn and Rose. The bacta coursing through his system, healing his brain and body, had left him sleeping peacefully in a way Finn didn’t get to see too often.

Watching him made his heart go soft in his chest, the Force bond glowing gently in his mind’s eye. Poe would watch over him too, if Finn needed him to. He knew because he’d done it, for _weeks_ while his spine healed after Starkiller. Poe was there when he startled out of nightmares, and kept him company when neither of them could sleep at all. If he had been the one to get his brain turned into scrambled egg while being a selfless bastard, Poe would be standing vigil by his side again, letting Finn’s head cut off the blood flow to his legs.

So, he sat on the floor while the other man’s chest rose and fell steadily, BB-8 in sleep mode beside his human and providing a nice headrest for Finn’s own achy, weary body. Rose fluttered around the General, digging through the medpack at the back of the cabin.

The engine heaved out another stuttering sound and Finn winced, shifting as his anxiety surged and his feet started to tingle from lack of circulation.

“Hey Rose—you wouldn’t happen to know anything about ships, d’you?”

She frowned, shaking her head and wiping the General’s blood off her hands and onto a rag in a devastatingly casual way that a person probably does when they spend a lot of time in a medical setting. Finn focused on her face, not the blood on her hands or the pinchers she had directed at Leia’s back.

“No, that’s my sister’s world. We’re pretty competitive, so Mom put us on totally different tracks—I’m not queasy around blood, and Paige isn’t scared of hei…” she seemed to swallow not just her tongue, but all her teeth, too, trailing off like the air was punched out of her. “ _Wasn’t_.” she corrected, the light her eyes gone in an instant, like a blown-out candle “Paige _wasn’t_ scared of heights…”

The silence hung, the backdrop of unsettling creaks and mechanical huffing and puffing only making the tightness in Finn’s chest more and more suffocating.

“I’m so sorry.” He managed to choke out.

She smiled, wiping away fresh tears on the only clean speck of rag left. “It’s… it’s not like it’s something we hadn’t talked about. I… I just hadn’t really _thought_. Y’know?”

She went back to work with a sigh, breathing long and purposefully, clearing the dry rasp of grief out of her throat before she said “D’you have anybody left?”

It was Finn’s turn to swallow his tongue. For a split second, his mind was haunted by that one memory of what was _possibly_ his mother, her eyes wide with terror, her face spattered with mud and grime—he didn’t trust it. No matter how real it felt. It was probably just a dream—he just made her up because he didn’t want to feel so alone.

“Isn’t that a morbid way to put it?”

“Is there another way to ask about family in the middle of a war?” she wasn’t unsympathetic, even though her words seemed rough. There were still tears falling quietly down her face like she’d forgotten they were there, and she smiled ruefully at him.

 _Yeah, there is_. He wanted to reply _You could ask it like it was any other day in any other lifetime, or you could just not ask_ … But he didn’t. His instinct told him this wasn’t normal—Rose was fragile. He remembered her helping him stand on the Bridge, watching Poe get hit from the wide window in the moments before her sister died, and the unwavering hope of her saying “ _They’ll be okay_ ” just to share some comfort.

This was grief talking. The bitterness that came with losing what little you had in the galaxy.

“Poe and Rey are my family. Kes, too. I don’t really remember my real family…” he combed his fingers through Poe’s dirty curls, just for something to do with his nervous hands.

“They died?”

“When I was really little, yeah.” He didn’t expand on it, and she didn’t ask. Most people knew, didn’t they? They already knew that he was an ex-stormtrooper? He was about to try piecing together the whole story for her, wanting to avoid the secrets he ended up keeping last time he was on a mission to a resistance base with a new friend-- but that was when the chugging of the hyperdrive became a watery gurgling noise. Finn knew less than zero things about ships, but even he knew that should _not_ have been happening.

Then, everything was drowned out by a wailing alarm. The entire cockpit looked like it was flashing from Finn’s angle, and his legs sent shocks of pins and needles all the way to his toes as he hefted Poe off of him and did his best to quickly and carefully lay his head onto the floor.

Just in time for the cabin to start shaking, sending them both Finn and Rose sprawling, gripping onto anything they could as they stumbled to the controls of the ship.

“What’s happening?” Rose cried.

“I don’t know—neither of us are pilots, remember?” Finn replied, his hands fidgeting over the hundred buttons, levers, and switches on the dashboard.

“I’m waking up Poe.” She disappeared back into the cabin.

Finn breathed, reaching out into the Force, trying to focus on something that wasn’t the violently rocking ship or the blaring alarm signal or the fact that he had _no_ _clue_ what he was doing. He tried to listen to his instincts, let the Force guide him, but it was murky and muddled in the face of all the dazzling, confusing lights on the dashboard.

 _Kriff_.

There was a small planet, dead ahead—maybe a moon. Poe could land them; he could totally land them and then they’d fix what was wrong and get on their way.

This would be totally _fine_.

“He won’t wake up!” he heard Rose shout, and his stomach clenched.

He searched his feelings, desperately rifling through their Force bond for anything wrong, but Poe was just healing. It was the same gentle, warm light between them, but Finn could feel _panic_ starting to claw up his throat. He punched into the connection between them like he was slapping Poe awake, his gaze still flitting over the controls as if a neon sign would come out and flash the right answer at him.

He shuddered through a long breath, flexing his fingers and trying to calm his _kriffing_ _mind_ —and he had an idea.

“Rose! Rose—switch on BB-8!”

_“What?”_

“BB—” the engine gasped and clanked, rocking the ship “The _droid_ , get the droid in here!”

BB-8 couldn’t get in there fast enough, rolling right into Finn’s leg and nearly sending him toppling into the flashing controls. Finn deflated with relief hearing the little whir and beep of the little atsromech.

They were going to be okay.

“Okay, Buddy, here’s the plan: you plug yourself into that port, try to stabilize this thing and get us into atmo of that planet there.” He pointed emphatically out the window and wanting solid ground under his feet like never before “I’ll have to land us—but maybe we can wake up Sleeping Beauty by then…”

He wasn’t holding out hope. He’d just have to trust his instincts. Trust the Force.

He could do this. Finn took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, wrestling his nerves into submission as he glided his hand to a lever that he could’ve _sworn_ he’d seen Poe fumble around with on their rocky takeoff. The ship wasn’t shaking quite as urgently as before, and Finn pushed the lever down with all the confidence of a total novice. Which he was.

He did something right—the shaking all but completely stopped, half the board stopped blinking their multi-colored SOSs, and Finn could feel a stirring in the bond behind his chest.

They were okay. Right?

BB-8 let out a concerned beep that sounded dangerously like “ _uh-oh”._

“Rose? What’s the status on Poe?” he shouted, a pit of dread digging into his gut that said something was about to go wrong.

“The bacta’s just too much for him. Can’t keep his eyes open, but I strapped him in. He’ll be safe, at least—what d’you want to do?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll need your help.” He cried back as they blasted through into the atmosphere of the small, green-looking planet below.

Rose was at his side in seconds, nearly tripping over BB-8. The droid made a rude noise.

The ship started to smoke, started to vibrate in a fine tuned, dangerous way that made Finn’s heart jump into his throat.

He needed the Force, he needed something, he—

There was a panel of blinking buttons on the far wall that he zeroed in on like a he was looking through a scope—“Rose, hit those buttons.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got a feeling, just _do_ it!”

The second they were pressed, the ship slowed marginally, still hurtling through the sky toward a very hard-looking ground, but it was something. They’d deployed every hatch, all the panels fluffed out and catching air like an incredibly inadequate parachute.

Leaning all the way into the Force energy guiding his hands, thinking of which controls Poe had used to get them into hyperspace in the first place, Finn eyed the controls and picked his best bet.

“Rose, d’you trust me?”

He still wasn’t sure if he trusted himself, but he didn’t see any other options at this point.

She grabbed his hand with hers, both of them sweaty and terrified.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do, Finn.”

“BB-8, do everything you can to slow us down, I got everything else.”

Both of them were screaming, but he couldn’t hear anything over the second bout of blaring alarms sounding through the cabin—the shell of their ship was entirely engulfed in flames, rocketing downward. When he gripped the controls and pulled them up from nose-diving into this foreign planet, they were so close to the earth that Finn could’ve sworn that he could count every blade of grass through the front window.

The landing was _bumpy_.

That was an understatement—the landing left them lucky to be in one piece, a trail of mud and flames gouged into the field behind them for nearly a mile before they finally dug themselves deep enough into the ground to stop skidding toward certain death.

Finn didn’t let out his sigh of relief until Rose let go of his hand and slammed him into a hug. They trembled and laughed, hardly able to believe they were alive at all—

“Hey— _Hey_ , I can’t move!”

A familiar voice broke into the moment, a brief jolt of disoriented confusion rippling through the bond in Finn’s chest. He let go of his new friend in an instant, rushing on his shaky legs into the cabin where Poe was practically strangled by a seatbelt.

“You’re okay— _Man_ , we could’ve used you a minute ago.” Finn knelt beside the other man, helping him out of the apparatus Rose had managed to tangle him up in.

“We managed.” the young woman shrugged, swooping in to flash a light in Poe’s eyes and examine the bandage on his head “Finn was amazing!”

“Yeah, he usually is—but _what_ _happened?”_ Poe mumbled, letting her putter around him before she promptly ignored his question and moved over to where the General was strapped down into her bunk as well.

Finn met Poe’s wide brown eyes, smiling apologetically at the questions in his gaze. They were less cloudy then before—Poe looked almost like his normal self-- and he could hardly make fun of him for being so dead to their crisis earlier if he was this much better now.

Thank _the_ _Force_ for bacta. And Rose.

“Crash landing.”

“What? What’s the damage? Where are we? That’s not Crait—” he gestured clumsily out the window, still getting a hold on himself.

“No, it’s… I don’t know where we are. I landed us, cus the ship was flashing, and there were sirens, and BB-8 almost got us stable, but…”

The droid came rolling into the cabin, trilling happily at Poe, beeping something clearly important that Poe understood—his brows knit together in concentration as he tried to keep up with every BB-8 had to say.

“Finn blew all the hatches open?” Beep, beep, whir, click “What made the engine fail, though?’ Beep, trill, click, whir—

Finn was pretty used to Poe being able to understand binary. At least, he’d like to think he was. But sometimes it crept up on him, and the tenderness would come up and shine through his chest like summer sun, lighting up their bond. Poe must’ve felt it, because he glanced up for a second while his droid chattered on, shooting him a cheeky wink that made Finn roll his eyes.

Eventually, the time came to help Poe heft himself up to his feet, pry open the gangway, and assess the damage.

Finn let out a low whistle. Rose was grimacing.

“You really roasted the poor thing…” Poe remarked, taking a lap of measured steps around the remains of the supply ship. He scrubbed a hand down his face, still bruised and groggier than he’d like to be, Finn was sure. They watched in silence, trying to make heads or tails of whichever planet they were on while their pilot dove headfirst under the charred shell of their ship.

It was a wide expanse of grassland, so wild and long that it tickled the tops of Finn’s boots. There was a dark, angry sea to their left, and they’d have plunged right into it if Finn had tried to land them any later… He couldn’t see land on the other side, but something jutted up into the foggy air, both jagged _and_ smooth, curved _and_ rigid. Finn couldn’t quite place the familiar bones of it, but it gave him an uneasy feeling.

To the right of them, the rolling hills of grass ended in a thick shadow of trees that must have been _huge_ if they could loom so large from so far away.

Rose looked like she was about to say something, but that was just when Poe surfaced from underneath the ship, an unfairly alluring smudge of grease on his cheek “We’ll need a couple replacement pieces for the outside… the guts of it _mostly_ look okay, though. Thermo-cuplars and the fuel lines are what sent us down, so that needs fixing. Sounds like a lot, but it’s not a hard fix—just a time consuming one. And I don’t see any scrap metals around this... place.”

His gaze penetrated into the distance, over Finn’s shoulder, staring at the mysterious ruin growing out of the churning water.

“This isn’t a planet. It’s a moon.” He muttered, his mouth slack with awe, squinting like he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“This is Endor, isn’t it?” Rose finally piped up. Poe only nodded mechanically, and Finn whirled around to look at the misty shape again.

He knew it now. It was in every propaganda holo the First Order had shown. The Finalizer had had its shape embossed as patterns in the mess hall and the barracks. Any image intended to stir sympathy for the Galactic Empire and its goal of “ _lasting peace_ ” could be made more meaningful with the bold statistic of _lives lost on the savage attack on the Death Star by the Rebel Alliance_.

“My parents fought here.” Poe said. “With Han and Leia at the end of the first war.”

“This is Endor?” Finn heard himself saying, mostly to himself, years of conditioning and selective history from his youth coming through to the forefront of his mind.

The clouded mess of emotions must’ve made their way through the Force bond, because Poe looked back at him over his shoulder, his brow furrowed as he studied Finn. He nudged back on the connection with a gentle unspoken question.

“I—” he tried to start, but was cut off by a rumble in the distance.

It was coming closer.

Couldn’t they just have one _kriffing_ moment of peace?

In a blink, they were surrounded by a wall of thick, furry legs attached to strange creatures—there were riders on their backs, spears and suspicious eyes all glaring down at the three of them.

Poe had immediately drawn his blaster, crossing between Finn and Rose and the sightlines of the newcomers in three swift steps.

“Who are you?” an authoritative woman snarled, poised to strike. There was something Finn recognized about her…

“Who are _we?_ Who are _you?”_ Poe growled back.

“Poe, don’t.” he cut in, grabbing the other man’s free hand.

The woman’s eyes flicked over to him, flashing with something as she took in his face. She recognized him too.

“ _FN?_ FN-2187?”

A chill ran up and down his spine, rankling over the scar on his back at the sound of his old number. He could see Rose’s head whip around to look at him out of the corner of his eye, and feel Poe tighten his grip on his hand.

“Not anymore. Call me Finn.”

With a wave of her hand, every weapon trained on them was at ease, and the woman was smiling down at him.

“I’m Jannah.”

* * *

So, Finn was a stormtrooper.

 _Ex-Stormtrooper_ , she reminded herself, _Ex_ … It was important. Rose had told him she trusted him. He’d saved her life—twice.

It didn’t matter what he’d been. It _shouldn’t_ , at least.

It didn’t matter that stormtroopers had massacred her town. Killed her family. It didn’t matter that now she was the only one left… Family could be made.

In her mind’s eye, Paige was still hurtling into the command deck of that First Order dreadnought. Family could be made, but it couldn’t be replaced.

Rose blinked away the heat behind her eyes, still stinging from the long hours since she was last on the Bridge, swallowing a sip of caf from her makeshift cup. She was sitting around a fire in the blown apart shell of a Galactic Empire base… Han Solo and General Organa had taken it down personally at the Battle of Endor—she’d heard the story a hundred times.

Now, it was crawling with people and furry little creatures with all the trimmings of a party—swapping stories, roasting something over the open flame, laughing and cleaning their weapons. There was a pile of charred white helmets and melted armor at what used to be the entrance to the base. Because all these people used to be stormtroopers. They’d defected. They’d come to Endor on stolen ships or as stow-aways across the galaxy.

They were like Finn, if he hadn’t been waylaid into the Resistance effort.

Flexing her hands and trying to relax surrounded by all _this_ , Rose took in the stock of what she knew and what she cared about.

Leia was still unconscious, resting in what Rose hoped was comfort, cocooned in bacta wrappings where she lay on the cot Jannah had provided for them.

Finn was smiling breathlessly, picking up ancient lines of conversation with Jannah and the others like he’d come _home_. His eyes shone in the firelight, but occasionally he’d glance around, searching the dusky evening for Poe.

Poe had fussed when Rose had checked his head one last time, giving him one last shot of bacta into his bad shoulder. It sent a chill through her to think of how the commander had gotten that injury—she had been listening when he’d shouted her sister’s name, when he’d tried to protect her, even with his damaged ship and her inevitable fate—

He had trouble looking her in the eye, as if he’d failed her somehow. Rose wanted to _thank_ him, to do something to sway the guilt from his shoulders, but she couldn’t find the words yet.

After the syringe was out and he’d rolled his sleeve back down, Poe strode right up to Jannah—maybe a little confrontational, if the woman’s raised eyebrow was anything to go by—and started asking questions about scrap metal and how they maintained their ships.

Poe disappeared in the direction of spare parts with his droid on his heels, sending one unreadable glance at Finn over his shoulder before he went.

 _“Jub Jub?”_ came a guttural sound from far nearer to her ear than she’d like, nearly jumping out of her skin and whipping her head around to see one of the native, teddy bear-like creatures of Endor plopped down beside her. They had a basket in their hands, bumping it into her arm a few times before she caught on that they were offering her food.

Offering a shy smile and wishing she spoke anything other than basic, Rose took a ration with a nod. “Thanks…”

Maybe this wasn’t too bad a place to land.

* * *

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

Poe didn’t turn around, pretending to be far more invested in the disused Galactic Empire ship parts then he actually was. Finn nudged into that spot in his chest, _again_ , and he swallowed his bitterness. He focused on what little training Leia had had the time to give them about their bond, trying to shut Finn out of what he was feeling.

 _The last thing you want to do is sway his decision_ , he thought darkly, pursing his lips and knowing that what he really wanted was for there to be no decision to make in the first place.

Why did _they_ have to be here?

“Poe.” Finn replied, a hand coming to rest on his still-achy shoulder.

Only then did he turn around, schooling his expression into something more cavalier than the jealousy that itched under his skin.

“Hey! Having fun?” it sounded a little too sharp, and he grinned to try and cover his _blatantly_ clear tracks.

If the furrow in Finn’s brow was any indication, he was doing a piss poor job of it.

“I can feel a pretty strong vibe that _you’re_ not—is it your head?” his hand made an aborted gesture, like he was going to run his fingers through his hair. Poe didn’t really know why he flinched away from the familiar, casual intimacy—as soon as he did, he was craving the other man’s touch, but it was too late. Finn was studying him like he’d grown a third ear and started speaking Huttese.

“I… I’m fine. I’m—You should go back to your people. I gotta get us back in hyperspace as soon as possible—”

“In that thing? It’s a death trap—talk to Jannah, she and her friends have a ton of wild, cobbled-together ships and speeders—”

“Oh, is that what I should do? Should I talk to Jannah?” he spat out the words, his panic, the unfamiliar vitriol of _insecurity_ , and the current of envy all swelled through their bond. Poe knew it by the way Finn stumbled back a step in his surprise.

The silence hung heavily in the last rays of Endor’s daylight. Poe wanted to leave right then, go back to his cause, and his squadron, and his _dad_ —Finn could stay if he wanted to. He had the choice, Poe wouldn’t take that from him.

In fact, he wouldn’t care at all. Finn _should_ stay.

Everyone deserved a family. This was Finn’s—they _understood_ him. They had that shared trauma; they understood the nightmares that Poe sometimes just _couldn’t_. And, besides, this was what he’d wanted, right? To escape and live under the radar, to live a quiet life away from the First Order? Rey had told Poe that— _Kriff_ , _Finn_ had told Poe that.

What Poe wanted was irrelevant. He only ever wanted Finn to feel free.

Finn could stay if he wanted—Poe would be fine. He wasn’t as Force Sensitive as him, anyway, it wouldn’t be too terrible. He’d get used to it. Poe had always been able to adjust—it made him a great pilot, and a good spy. He could do it again.

No problem.

His lip wobbled humiliatingly, and he couldn’t meet Finn’s lost gaze even while he scanned over him like he was looking for an injury, _something_ that prompted this.

As if he hadn’t _considered_ it. That only made him bristle with irritation, rolling his eyes.

 _“Jannah?_ You’re _jealous_ of—Poe—” he sputtered “Here I was thinking you were just doing your single-minded, Poe-on-a-mission thing! Or you were worried about your dad! Or—”

There he went, missing the mark. Poe huffed out an exasperated sigh. He had felt the rush of disbelief, nostalgia, and _love_ that had run through Finn when she’d called him by his old number. Poe _knew_ how he felt.

“I barely know her anymore! I mean, it’s good to see her. We were like siblings, grew up in the same Trooper base, but I—”

“I just don’t want to get in your way.”

“In my--? Poe! We’re _bonded_ , I _lo_ —”

“These people understand you in a way I don’t, and I _can’t!_ They did what you wanted to do—don’t you ever wish that you’d done what _they_ did?”

Finn let the night air hang between them again, looking like he’d been slapped, or like Poe had completely and totally run him in a circle. The disused ship parts in his hands were digging into his palms with the force that he gripped them, and now that he could catch his breath and the shouted words were out of his head and filling up the space between them, he realized his mistake.

Finn hadn’t even _thought_ about leaving the Resistance. He really hadn't. Poe had felt that weird mix of Feelings and strong connection with Jannah and he thought he'd understood. But, it was _him_ who had missed the mark. 

He was gawking at Poe, fighting for the words to say, and Poe could feel the muddled swirl of emotions filtering through their bond like a noxious gas, going to his head and sending a flush all the way to his ears.

He was grateful for the darkness, at least.

Before Finn could get a cohesive sentence out, Poe managed to choke out “ _Kriff_ , I need some air…” as if they weren’t already outside. He didn’t run away, but he did walk pretty damn quickly.

Ignoring Finn calling out behind him, trying to swallow the relentless shame—he had been so stupid, he was _so_ _stupid_ —Poe nearly tripped. He kicked a rock, only stumbling around it and continuing on his way until he reached the sea, the Death Star cutting a sharp silhouette against the deep sky. Poe sighed out a long breath, rubbing his knuckles over the center of his chest where Finn’s presence was still linked to him.

He hadn’t noticed that what he kicked was not a rock at all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm REALLY proud of this one. 
> 
> If you like it, shoot me a comment, tell me what you thought <3 My semester has started up and I'll be out of town next week, so the next update will be slow. The more comments you leave me, the faster you'll get an update! 
> 
> Enjoy <3

He could feel a constant light burning through his chest, like the crack between curtains—the kind that would shine directly into your eyes on an early morning when you’re trying to sleep in.

It was shining right in his eyes, dazzling and annoying, leaving him to wander the dark halls of his Star Destroyer in a daze of sour irritation and thinly veiled panic. Could anyone else see it? He could’ve sworn he caught Hux whispering to Phasma from behind his hand just the other day—eyes on him with a conspiratorial look.

Could they see the light in him?

Ren had volunteered to interrogate their most recent prisoner after that, leaving what was left of the man moaning in pitiful agony. Then, he pointedly gave the command on the destruction of Bespin—intelligence said that the useless speck of a planet had become a hub for supplies and information sold to the Resistance, and for that, they deserved their fate.

After the blood on his hands that day, Kylo Ren swallowed hard and forced himself to breathe. He must’ve proven himself this time.

There was no way they could see the crack in him, letting in this burning _light_.

It had to be _her_ —even with Han Solo and General Organa dispatched, he still couldn’t commit himself to the Dark Side of his forefathers. It made him feel sick, it left him chewing his cheek until his mouth was full of blood.

The light in him had been snuffed out when he blasted apart his mother’s ship. That was what he thought, anyway. He thought he was finally free of the _weakness_ of attachments like his family.

But now, she was _there_ , tugging on the Force inside him and making him want to _stop_. To just disappear.

The girl from the forest. He’d last seen her silhouetted by the blue light of a stolen lightsaber—his grandfather’s stolen lightsaber. She had released a raw, violent power—such _potential_. Luke could never help her realize the true extent of her powers.

When he had offered, she had run from him. But now…

Now, she _couldn’t_. They were bound, locked into each other’s heads—was it the will of the Force that they train together? Why else would it be acting of its own accord to keep Rey’s light in his chest, giving him hints to find her.

If he brought her to Supreme Leader Snoke, all would be mended. Ren would finally be treated with the respect and trust that he _deserved_ —he could fill this aching void in his chest where his parent’s final moments still pried him open and exposed him to the light. He could fill in those memories by training his own padawan, finally becoming a master—he’d finally forget Han and Leia.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts, traipsing through the command deck, that he nearly missed Hux’s words as he passed by.

“… dormant Imperial probe just started firing off a homing beacon. It’s been nearly 30 years.”

 _“Probably a malfunction, General—you’re far too optimistic.”_ replied Phasma, brushing the words aside just as the Force lit up like an alarm in Ren’s chest. It was calling him, tugging him to his ship— _Rey_ was on Endor. It _had_ to be.

“The Force says otherwise, Captain.” He interjected, affecting his most commanding tone and making both the Captain and the General flick their gazes over to him. Hux’s pursed lips were only just barely accompanied by an eye roll, and the low simmering rage in his chest ignited in mere seconds.

“Your religion may, for once, prove useful, Ren.” The words seemed like they were pulled from the deepest, most unwilling part of him, and Ren carefully showcased the twitch of his smirk. “Finding the new rebel base is most important—we can take them down before they even have a chance to regroup—”

“I have reason to believe it’s even better than that,” Ren boasted, already itching to get into his ship. Hux raised an eyebrow “This may lead directly to Skywalker and the girl.”

Endor had a rocky coast, and frigid, tumultuous sea. He could still feel the wave that swept him away from the strange dream that past week.

It must be there. She _must_ be there.

“And track down two people instead of an entire fighting force? The General’s forces are far more threatening to the Order—”

“The General is _dead_ —” Ren growled, ignoring the strangled sensation around his ribs.

“All the more reason to get them while they’re weak!” Hux barked back at him.

 _“It is entirely possible that this isn’t anything at all—that moon is still inhabited by what’s left of the Ewok tribes.”_ Phasma broke into his thoughts, her monotone sounding sardonic to his ears, sending a fresh prickle of indignance up his spine.

He snarled, gaze focused with a laser-like intensity on Hux, who only glared back.

Ren knew a challenge when he saw one. It was all he ever seemed to see, and while part of him was tired of the _constant_ _mistrust_ and _disrespect_ —to the grandson of _Darth Vader_ himself—another part of him relished the chance to fight. To live up to his ancestral rights as a leader of the galaxy.

“Well, it seems we should leave it for the Supreme Leader to decide.”

“Seems so.” Hux spat back.

They both ignored Phasma’s pointed sigh, the eye roll she was clearly giving them behind her helmet. He’d get back at her for it later—for now, Ren took swift steps, ensuring that he would be the first to step into Snoke’s chambers.

Something in his feelings left him with a pang of suspicion as the three of them approached the audience with their master. It was as if Snoke had known they were coming.

The tug in his chest ripped a deeper chasm, a new wave of conflict swelling up in him that he desperately tamped down.

There was no time for uncontrolled feelings—not when Snoke would feel his wariness in the Force.

“Supreme Leader—” Hux beat him to it, bowing even lower, more humbly than Ren while he was caught up in his thoughts “a dormant Imperial probe has alerted us to a lead on the Resistance base, Sir.”

“Has it?” Snoke simpered, a deeply patronizing note in his voice that sent a thrill of vindictive glee through his veins “And how can you be so sure, General?”

Hux floundered under the sudden pressure, and Ren smirked down at his boots, still bowed in deference—as if _he_ should have to bow to anyone at all.

“I… It is a calculated risk to assume, Master—but the imperative nature of getting ahead of General Organa’s forces should take prec—”

“You come to me with no _plan_ , General?” his slimy, misshapen face had split into a malicious, humorless smile when Ren peeked up at him “How unbecoming of someone at your station…”

“I propose a more likely, more _important_ option, Master.” Ren spoke up, claiming his moment and feeling the adrenaline of success course through him “The Force has revealed to me the location of Skywalker and his padawan—there is a possibility that the probe was activated by them—not the Resistance fighters.”

Silence hung in the air, permeating the cold chamber like an invisible fog. Snoke’s gaze dressed Ren down past his skin and bone, into the essence of his soul. He held his breath.

“ _Good_.” He cooed, almost genuine in his praise and Ren was careful not to reveal the level of sheer relief in his slow exhale. “This connection may prove of paramount importance, Kylo Ren…”

He dared to look up, gazing back at the Supreme Leader with all the confidence of a certain successor, ready to accept his mission “I’ll ready my knights and set a course for Endor—”

“Captain Phasma.” Snoke cut him off, waving his deformed hand and sending a sudden rush of Force energy to the back of Ren’s head, forcing his line of sight back down to his boots on the gleaming black tile.

_“Supreme Leader?”_

“You will gather your best platoon of troops and set a course for the moon of Endor. Effective immediately. If they’re natives or smugglers, kill them on sight. If it’s anything else, take them as prisoners—they may prove more useful alive than dead.”

_“Yes, Master.”_

Just barely over the roar of his pulse in his ears, he heard the click of the captain’s boots as she turned on her heel and exited the chamber—with _his_ mission. A wave of absolute _rage_ and _betrayal_ swept through him, boiling his blood and leaving him rooted to his spot. He could feel Hux glancing over to him-- but was he smirking or grimacing?

Ren didn’t care. _Snoke_ was the one _smirking_ —Ren was being tested. He was always being tested.

* * *

The dreams didn’t fade away. If anything, they grew stronger every night—more and more abstract, based in blind sensation and flashes of desolate places, bloodied friends, and dire circumstances. Rey woke every night with her heart hammering against her ribs. She jolted up in her bed, crying like a little girl abandoned in a sandy wasteland.

Ren hadn’t shown up again, but Rey and Luke were on constant alert. Sometimes she could swear that she saw a flash of a red lightsaber or heard the flutter of his cloak in the shadowy coves and recesses of the rocks.

Sometimes, her chest would suddenly clench during her meditations, filled with an overwhelming urge to run, or fight—it was _something_ that she couldn’t place.

The memory of Kylo Ren in the cove had forced her to start meditating elsewhere on the island. On the west peak, where the dual sunset ended each day. In her little stone hut in the early mornings. In the miraculously still clearing in front of the hollow tree.

That had become her favorite spot. It made the whole galaxy feel quieter, and more at peace. When she wasn’t meditating, she was training in Luke’s physical courses and honing her ability with a lightsaber, or voraciously reading through the Old Republic texts within the tree.

Then, there was the lightsaber. The one with the melted hilt and dislodged, cracked kyber crystal. There was such a deep sense of _love_ around it, shadowed with that familiar, gut-wrenching guilt that told her more than Luke ever could. Even knowing, why he had exiled himself like he had and why he had tried to kill Ren—something still didn’t add up. 

“Did you destroy your lightsaber because of your guilt? About Ren?” she asked rather bluntly over bowls of some type of mildly palatable stew one night.

Luke, to his credit, only sighed and shrugged “Yes and no. It was the destruction of my temple, the slaughter of my students—the fact that I was powerless to stop it. I lost faith in my abilities, I lost faith in the Jedi—I almost abandoned the Force entirely. I didn’t trust myself with my own weapon, and I didn’t consider myself a Jedi for the longest time. So, when I came to Ahch-To, I took the crystal out. But I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it…”

Rey nodded, letting the silence hang for a long moment.

“You said that you could teach me about… about who I am?” she finally remarked, phrasing it like a question as if she had forgotten—like she hadn’t been thinking about it since the second he told her.

The look he sent her told her that he knew that “Search your feelings, Rey. You already know who you are.” His smile was light and kind.

“I thought you were going to help me discover more about my parents? Who they were and why they left me behind--?” Her confusion must have shown on her face, because he was just opening his mouth to explain when a wave of absolute _rage_ and _betrayal_ swept through her, boiling her blood and sending her to her feet to whir around, looking down on her master.

“Rey!”

“You _lied_ to me?” she hissed, “You expect me _trust_ you—how can I trust you when you—”

“Rey, this is the Dark Side, you’re being manipulated— I can _feel_ it! These feelings aren’t yours!” he cried, and part of her was terrified at the sudden emotion that had taken over her, unsure where Luke’s words took her from mild confusion to murderous wrath—

“You said you’d teach me _who_ _I_ _am!”_ she shouted back, her mind’s eye filling unbidden with the sound of a little girl’s scream and the roar of an engine kicking up sand in her face—why did they leave? Where did they go? Why didn’t they take her with them?

The betrayal was more potent than anything she’d ever felt, carrying her off in a current she couldn’t fight.

“Search your feelings, you know this isn’t you!” Luke tried to remain calm “Your parents don’t decide who you are, Rey—they have an effect, but the only person who can decide your identity is you!”

“So, what then? I’m a lowly scavenger from Jakku with the Force in her veins? Where did my strength come from? Why do I have a Force connection with the most _despicable_ man in the galaxy--?”

_“Rey!”_

Her stomach twisted, her teeth bared in a desperate snarl, the cyclone of wild emotion taking her apart and remaking her against the will of her body and mind.

She needed some air. She needed some space—the hut was suffocating her.

The door slammed behind her, and she ignored Luke’s last call of her name as she tore down the stone steps into the night. It was raining again, even harder than the first night he’d let her in, and it sent an agonized pang of loss through her chest to be running away. She couldn’t turn back, the familiar leash around her middle tugging her along. 

She was back at the Falcon when she finally recovered the strength to pull back against the demanding pull under her breastbone.

She knew what was coming. She could feel him like a virus in her gut, churning her stomach with nausea and panic. Her brow was clammy with sweat, even underneath the soaking rain. Was she feverish? She could’ve sworn she felt a chill.

“So, you’re on Endor.” A deep monotone came up from behind her, sending her turning on her heel to take in the scarred face of Ren.

He was closer than she expected—far closer than she _wanted_ him to be.

“So, you _are_ as stupid as you look.” She spat back. Ren only smiled condescendingly, but there was something between them that gave her pause.

It was a crack between the murky shadows of his Force power—Rey could see in his face, plain as day. A crack where the light shone through. It was that temptation he’d been muttering to himself about. He was _conflicted_ , he still felt the call to the Light.

“What’re you looking at?” he growled. She was struck with an idea, fighting the unwanted pull of Snoke in her chest and taking a step back from Ren’s looming figure.

“You have your mother’s eyes. How can you _look_ at yourself?” she indulged her own anger, swept up in her love for Leia, the grief of what he’d said before _maybe_ being _true_ sending a spike of fear through her heart “Is that why you hide behind a mask? So, you don’t have to remember how she _loved_ you—”

_“Shut up—”_

“How you _betrayed_ her?” Rey cried “And for what? For who? To be a pawn in Snoke’s twisted game? He’s _using_ you—”

Ren was floundering, as if he’d expected a warmer welcome—as if she could ever forget Finn’s scars, or Poe’s trauma, or Han’s body falling into the void of Starkiller, Chewie’s howling screams and the look on Leia’s face when they returned without him.

This man had murdered a temple full of young Jedi. He had destroyed a whole planetary system full of innocent lives.

“He’s using _you_ —I’m _different_ —” he hissed back, but Rey wasn’t done, her hand gripping her lightsaber.

“Is all that _unbridled power_ worth it? All the promises the Dark Side gives you? Or have you just traded a leash for a muzzle? Have you _ever_ been in control?”

 _“SHUT UP!”_ he roared, releasing his lightsaber with an electric buzz that crackled against the rain even while Kylo remained dry.

He was getting closer to her. Instinct told her that the battle would be real—this was _not_ a dream; he was closer than she thought.

She unsheathed her own borrowed blade, schooling herself out of her rage and into something more plaintive. She could turn him—she could do this for Leia, for the Resistance, and for the sake of making _someone_ in the First Order pay for their crimes.

“You’ve already murdered your family—people that _loved_ you, _Ben_. How much longer will you play into being Snoke’s rabid dog?”

With wild eyes and conflict swirling through the Force around him, he swung his lightsaber in a flash of red.

She parried, the torrential rains of Ahch-To dripping into her eyes, making her rely on the Force to guide her while their charged sabers crackled against each other in the night air. The flowing energy coursing into her from Ren-- which had until recently only served to cloud her mind and keep her from sleep—now made her path clearer than ever. She knew what she needed to do.

But she couldn’t do it here. 

“At least I _have_ a family—I’m a _Skywalker_ , descended from one of the greatest Sith in the galaxy! The power of the Dark Side is _in my blood_ —What’re you? A _nobody_ from Jakku! _Your family_ didn’t even _want you!_ You are _nothing!”_

The cresting wave of rage took over her, bringing her weapon down hard again and _again_ , forcing Ren onto the defensive. She backed him up, down the slope from the Falcon and onto the narrow bridge of stone between the cliffs. Slippery with the rain and frenzied in her attack, Rey felt her heel knocking loose pebbles into the sharp rocks and churning waters.

Her mistake gave her pause, just long enough for Ren to flip their blades and send her to her knees. Her lightsaber crackled, warm on her face and bathing her in the glow of their clashing weapons.

Like Starkiller.

But this time, she _knew_ _better_.

She closed her eyes and breathed into the core of her being, settling the screams of the little girl inside her who was always held back from chasing the people who had left her behind.

 _“Your parents don’t decide who you are, Rey—they have an effect, but the only person who can decide your identity is you!”_ Luke’s words resonated in her mind in the way they couldn’t before, when Snoke was luring her out into the rain.

Breathing life into the memories of her friends, the people Ren had tried to tear her away from, his _pathetic_ belief that he had some sort of control—that he was _powerful_.

She could drive a wedge in there. She could turn him.

She forced herself up from her knees, maneuvering her blade with a hiss as she twisted Ren’s weapon right out of his grip and into the sea so far below.

Knocking him back with a well-placed punch, she disoriented him.

“I am Rey of Jakku, and I don’t need anyone but me to tell me who I am.” She declared, clear and _free_ , filling her lungs with a fresh breeze and lifting her heart.

“You say that now—” he sneered “But, you’ll be crawling back to us.”

She grinned, a little feral as she held her elbow against his throat, pinned to the lonely rock that kept him from the dark, watery plunge.

“Oh no, _Ben_. But, I’m coming for _you_.”

And she shoved him into the boulder one final time, using the Force to move the rock with it and sending them both sailing through the air and into the sea.

He never hit the water, disappearing like mist and leaving her alone in the vicious wind and rain, teetering with sudden exhaustion on the narrow bridge.

Rey glanced back toward the huts and the warm light in her master’s window. Her heart clenched, but she still turned her back on the scene, running off toward the Falcon.

She knew what she had to do.

* * *

 _The base that Jannah built isn’t anything remarkable,_ Poe thought, absolutely _not_ sulking as he wandered back into the camp that night, but he was lying to himself. Being petty, and he knew it—he could picture Dad rolling his eyes at him, saying something stupidly sincere and right about _love_ , and _swallowing pride,_ and _letting go of fear so you can forge a deeper bond_ , and—

And he may never see him again, so it didn’t really matter. Poe swallowed the knot of desperate dread, willing away the preemptive grief. Kes had been in worse scrapes than the past couple days. Poe blinked back the heat stinging his eyes and sunk back into the envy—more for a distraction than anything else.

The blown open shell of the Imperial base was shrouded in camouflage so good, that Poe would have missed it if he hadn’t had BB-8 to point it out to him. The defectors had salvaged one or two of the rooms in the bowels of the disused base—a fresher, the remains of a command center that functioned as their own little medical quarters, and a supply closet. It was better stocked than a bunch of defectors hiding from literally _everyone_ should probably have. Poe wanted to question it, but he was sure he’d get a bland answer and a raised eyebrow.

Jannah didn’t seem to like him. _Not_ that he cared—he didn’t like her either.

The last embers of the fire smoldered in the pit, cots lined the tree trunks in endless bunk bed-like hammocks, each one with a sleeping person inside, and Poe couldn’t help but wonder if Finn was sleeping in one of them.

 _Maybe one of them could become his… if he stays here._ He groused, chewing his lip until he tasted the acrid tang of blood.

Too bitter to sleep, Poe padded silently down into the little medbay—it was all dark, sleek Imperial styling, but draped with woven grass curtains and sections of timber used for benches and chairs. It was as if the forest had found its way inside, like these people were trying to banish the fingerprint of the Empire and the First Order from every inch of their lives—make it _their_ _own_ , instead.

Poe did _not_ feel a pang of sympathy in his chest. They were nice, letting them stay—but they had to _go_ , and it was… too _comfortable_ here.

He had to get the General back to her troops. He had to get back into the fight. He had to get back to his _Dad_.

Poe did _not_ have to bite down on a helpless noise, looking at Leia’s sleeping body in the lone medical cot. Her body looked small and completely still. Even the rise and fall of her breathing seemed imperceptible in the warm, dim light of the room.

It was made of timber and furs and meticulously sewn by someone who wasn’t experienced, but had taken care to reinforce every clumsy stitch—like they were learning something new, just _for_ _them_ , for the first time.

He _was_ grateful to whoever had made it. It set something at ease in his tight chest to know his superior officer got to rest on something well made—something _loved_.

Poe had accused her of letting people die in vain. Of sending his pilots out to be slaughtered.

He dropped himself down heavily into the log beside her, watching the flick of her dreaming gaze under her eyelids and wishing she could hear him. He wanted her to know that he would’ve died to protect her from that blast—he regretted every second of what he said. His cheek stung with the sense memory of her vicious little hand colliding with his cheek, and he let out a wet chuckle through his dry, tight throat.

“You were right—well, we _both_ were. I can’t give you all the props…” he rasped, unsure if he was talking to anyone at all, but knowing on an _instinct_ that he had to speak. “Sending the pilots out was a risky move. _Too_ risky—I was right. But… but I know you care. Care about us more than _anything_ , and that…” _was wrong, was disrespectful, was cruel_ , he finished in his head, the words strangled on their way to his lips.

He let out a long exhale to soften up his pride, faltering for just a moment before indulging the tug in his chest and taking her limp hand in both of his.

“Dad always says that you’re always right, even when you’re wrong. That it’s okay to disagree with you, but… but it’ll save my life to trust you.” He squeezed her hand between his, missing his mom more viscerally than he had in years. Like fresh grief. His lip wobbled. “I don’t want you to save my life—I want you to send me out! Wherever you need me, I’ll be there. Secret missions, dangerous missions. When I’m out there, no one else has to be, no one else gets _hurt_.” 

How many pilots were lost? That day against the dreadnought _alone?_ Poe swallowed against the current of shame that drowned him, closing his eyes and watching Paige plunge her way through the command deck in a ball of flames—he could have helped. A busted computer system could be helped with the right droid, he could have…

“What a _waste_.” He hissed, the words escaping like steam.

He didn’t hear anyone come in, but he felt someone sit beside him on his log. They were just close enough to brush his arm, but not too close. Poe didn’t bother to look over—he knew he couldn’t look her in the eye if he tried. Not when he knew she was grieving, and he could have prevented it, and Leia should’ve never had them in the _kriffing_ air in the first place—

“Finn was awfully snappy tonight.” Rose stated pointedly.

He felt his cheeks grow warm and his heart clench.

“Well, that’s sounds like Finn’s problem.”

She looked him over. He could feel her gaze on him, but he just _couldn’t_ look back.

“Please look at me, Poe.”

The thing about Rose was that she wasn’t a lot like her sister—she was quiet. She didn’t make loud demands, she was fastidious in her work, her primary concern was _helping_ people, not _fighting_. Everything about Paige had been exuberant and questioning and bold. She rose through the ranks fast, made herself known to the top brass and the veterans and _Poe_. Her flying was always erratic, even in _training_ _exercises_ , in a way that even made _him_ green around the gills.

Paige had reminded him of himself—but younger, chasing the adrenaline with all she had—but she put too much faith in the air beneath her wings. She was reckless in a way Poe wasn’t. It made him feel even worse to think that he’d thought it before. That that pilot was going to get herself killed someday. 

Rose was different than Paige. She had a quiet smile with a tilt of bitter anger, like the war had left her scarred-- but there was something about her that was still _soft_.

Poe liked her. And Paige had left her for Poe to look after.

Rose sighed when Poe didn’t listen to her, looking down at the General’s hand in his as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

“Y’know, on my first day in the medbay, I was assigned to your room? After your collapse, I mean.”

He huffed a half a laugh, remembering just a few short months ago like it was actually years in the past. He’d collapsed with the lack of sleep, the dehydration that comes with drinking nothing but caf and vomiting up 90% of the food he managed to get down—the aftermath of Jakku and Ren’s force-probe was so distant. Compared to now, though, stranded on an old battle ground with no easy way home and no guarantee that the people he loved would be safe-- Finn finding a potential home away from Poe, Leia lying on her cot, swaddled in bacta wrappings, and Kes… Kes might already be dead—Poe almost wished that he’d wake up in the medbay again. With his head pillowed on Finn’s chest, his dad standing sentinel by the door.

“Yeah?” he rasped in reply.

“Yeah. Dr. Kalonia took me to get a good look at you. She said I’d be seeing you a lot because you couldn’t pass up an opportunity for martyrdom.” He must’ve made some sort of face, because then she said “She was mostly kidding. But the more I learned about you and all your past missions, the more I figured out she was right. You would do anything for the cause, agree to no backup in the heart of First Order territory, take missions that could just as easily be called suicide.”

“D’you have a point?”

“Why’re you so mad at the General taking risks, when it’s all you ever do?”

He tried to swallow the venom rising up his throat, but the vitriol was still there when he said “I take one-man missions—I put myself in danger. No one else, when I can avoid it. I do what has to be done—the stuff no one else wants to do—because it moves the cause forward, honors the people we’ve already lost, and keeps more people from dying in vain. I’m okay with taking my life in my hands, but taking risks like that with _other_ people’s lives? People sign up to fight, not necessarily to _die_. When I put people in formation, they know the stakes and they know I wouldn’t put them there if they didn’t have to be.” he shook his head, the words drying up in his mouth, his jaw tense.

The silence was contemplative. Rose didn’t try to touch him or comfort him—something he was simultaneously grateful for and not. It wasn’t really her comfort he was craving, though. It wouldn’t be enough. He knew it by the tug in his chest that called out to Finn, outside of Poe’s control.

 _It seems like any Force power you have is always out of your control_ , he thought, internally rolling his eyes and berating himself for his _weakness_. He hoped Finn hadn’t felt that, but knew he almost definitely had. Finn always felt him—he was better at this than Poe. 

“You’re right.” He could she her nodding in his periphery, then she gave a chuckle “You sound like a general yourself, y’know.”

He scoffed, willing the thought out of his head. _General Dameron_ —he wouldn’t lie, he’d thought about it. It carried a lot of weight. The pressure to maintain all those lives? It would be too much.

Rose sighed “You can disagree with her—I did too, it put my sister in the situation that _k-killed_ her—but you can’t change the past. Make sure they didn’t die in vain by continuing the mission.” There was a pause, and he heard her sniffle “And while we’re at it, the best way to honor the dead is by respecting their choices.”

There was a small hand on his cheek, forcibly turning his head to meet Rose’s swimming brown eyes.

“There was nothing you could do to save her. My sister made a _sacrifice_ — just like you do every time you accept the odds of a top-secret mission on Jakku, or jump into a blast zone to save your superior officer-- respect my sister’s choice. Don’t cheapen her legacy.”

She smiled, a tear slipping down her cheek as she did, before she stood up and walked to the door, not waiting for any of the endless apologies that Poe wanted to give her. But she did stop in the threshold of the makeshift med quarters, her face deadly serious as she turned around.

“Finn was looking for you all night—maybe have a chat with him in the morning?” the sardonic expression that twisted her lips looked so much like the Doc that Poe almost laughed outright, despite her sobering words.

He looked back at Leia’s peaceful face once he was alone in the space again. He could have sworn he saw her nose crinkle the teeniest bit, and her eyelashes had maybe fluttered.

Poe waited with a long moment of baited breath before deciding that it was all his imagination.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO! I'm back! I'm sorry it took me so long to update-- I was on a holy pilgrimage to GALAXY'S EDGE and HOLY SHIT. If you can swing it, go. Go today, drop everything. It's everything you've ever wanted. 
> 
> Okay, that being said, here's the last chapter before we are officially in CLIMAX MODE. I've been waiting to get to chapters 7-8 throughout this entire story, and I'm SO excited to get writing! 
> 
> In the meantime, you can always keep my motivation up by sharing your lovely thoughts about this chapter. <3 You are simply the best! 
> 
> Enjoy!

Endor had the kind of sunrise that Finn had thought could only exist in his imagination, or in old holofilms, or something. The sea was calm and deep, deep blue, the carcass of the ruined Death Star protruding up into the morning mist, silhouetted by a gradient of vibrant reds and oranges, the tinge of purple still at the edges of the atmosphere at dawn.

Back on D’Qar, the sunrises began and ended at the line of the thick jungle canopy—over too fast and onto another long, stressful day of preparing for the enemy to strike.

Endor was _different_. He watched the shifting sky, from red to orange to yellow, and for a moment, the thought _did_ cross his mind.

What if he didn’t have to worry about the war anymore? What if he _stayed?_

He hadn’t even thought about it until Poe had given up on actually communicating and started yelling—Finn swallowed the thick lump of emotion in his throat and it _hurt_. He couldn’t imagine leaving Poe, or Rey, or Rose or Leia or the Resistance. The last time he and his pilot had been separated, he’d nearly lost his mind in the worry and sleep deprivation. He’d never felt as good as he did the night Poe had jumped out of Black One, crusted in salt and grime, and when he’d let Finn wash it all away. Their bond was so fresh then, but Finn knew he would have been clinging to him even without it. It had been another brush with death, another few days kept from each other by war and duty…

He didn’t want to just _stay_ —he wanted to be _safe_ , and keep _his_ _family_ safe.

He couldn’t find Poe all night. It was as if every time Finn reached into their bond, the other man slipped further away. He was stronger in their connection than he thought. He was getting better at blocking Finn out. It made his gut twist and his eyes sting to think that his pilot was pulling away from him.

Sitting out by the cliffs, listening to the waves and watching the sky, Finn leaned against the charred remains of the ship they’d escaped certain death on. He took a deep breath of salty air and tried to reach out once again, striking a few soft chords on the strings between him and wherever Poe was.

He’d done this several times throughout the sleepless night, waiting with baited breath to feel the other man’s reassuring tug back.

But, Poe hadn’t. There had only been the conflicted, angry swirl of the other man’s emotions imprinting themselves in Finn’s chest, making him snappy and volatile throughout the last of dinner and the party Jannah had thrown for them.

_Rose had been watching him closely from across the firepit. Jannah had raised a dry eyebrow at him, leaning over to whisper something in Rose’s ear that made her roll her eyes and shrug._

_“Anything you’d like to share?” Finn had sniped, smirking tightly._

_Jannah was the one to speak up—no surprise there. The longer he spent with her, the more of their shared childhood he remembered. It ached in his chest to think about who they had been—he had been shy and afraid, gentle in a way that none of the Troopers in their home thought of as particularly useful. Except Jannah. Jannah was all of 8 years old, Finn a little younger, when she claimed him as her charge. She spoke up for him when he stuttered and took the blame for his mistakes._

_It was why they’d ultimately been separated._

_“You and your pilot—he’s in a bad mood?”_

_“Only all the time.” Finn shot back, scrubbing a hand down his exasperated face._

_There had been a note of durasteel in her voice that clearly stated that her protective instinct hadn’t faltered, even after all these years. It made Finn’s heart swell, and he wondered if Poe could feel that in their bond. He always insisted that he didn’t “feel things the same way Finn did”, but Finn wasn’t sure how much he believed that._

_If Poe could feel things like that, it was no wonder that he’d thought Finn would…_

_“He’s got his reasons—stressed.” He recanted his flippancy, feeling guilt twist his heart “We got separated from his dad when we escaped the Resistance ship…”_

_Jannah pursed her lips, making it clear that she didn’t think there was a single thing that could justify Poe’s sour attitude._

At that time, Finn was still annoyed enough that he didn’t think so either, but now, with the sun rising on a new day and a sleepless night behind him, Finn just wanted to see him again. He wanted Poe to sit down, shut up, and let him explain how much he _loved_ him. That Finn could _never_ go, not without Poe by his side. He’d kiss him breathless; he’d make any promise he could reasonably keep, and even maybe some less reasonable ones; he’d draw up a kriffing _graph_ , recite _any_ of C3PO’s stupid odds that he could to express how _tightly_ Finn had tied himself to Poe. And how _glad_ he was that he had.

The sunrise on Endor was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and looking at it alone in a place where his past and present collided like this made him yearn for peace in a way that he didn’t think he ever had.

He couldn’t have slept if he tried, which was the only way that he knew the sudden burst of light and heat behind his eyes was something other than a nightmare. It was something _worse—_

 _Poe’s face flashed in his mind’s eye, blood and bruises making him nearly unrecognizable… he was snarling at somebody, looking up with a hard glare as he spat out a phrase that Finn had only ever heard him say in the frenzy of early morning panic, “The Resistance will not be intimidated by you”… there was a gloved hand reaching down, tangling into his curls and pulling up on his hair like they intended to rip it out at the root… something had changed, there was no more defiance, Poe’s brown eyes were wide and wild. He was desperate, he was terrified, he was staring right at Finn like he could see him watching the moment, like he was begging for help_ —

His ribs constricted and his throat burned—for the split second of liminal reality between the Force and Finn’s place on the cliffs of Endor, he could feel the aches and pains of a phantom beating, feel the prick of a thousand needles sinking into the tender scar along his spine.

He gasped, trembling, suddenly breaking into cold sweats and shivers as he searched wildly around him. His instincts tightened into a knot in his gut—he felt the presence of the all-too-familiar ship as it broke the brightening atmosphere. He felt it long before he saw it, but remained rooted to his spot until the pin pricks of shadow appeared in the sky.

He had hoped he would be wrong.

But the dread rose up his throat like bile, and Finn finally forced himself into action, running through the overgrown grasslands toward the treeline.

Breaking through the undergrowth and into the defector’s camp only saw Finn smacking headfirst into someone, sending them flying into a thick tree trunk with a smack that he felt as much as heard.

“ _Kriff_ —Watch it!” a familiar voice snapped, but Finn was too relieved to see him to care “Finn?” Poe’s tone shifted fast enough to send tremors through the bond he’d been neglecting, and Finn nearly cried, he was so happy to feel it “Finn, what’s wrong?”

“I felt Phasma through the Force—there’s a First Order ship landing on the cliffs.” He stumbled over his words “We gotta warn Jannah.”

“And get the General outta here.”

In a blink, Poe was all business, his jaw working as he surveyed the landscape from their position.

“You alert the defectors—this’ll come down to a fight. I’ll get Rose on Leia duty.”

He nearly turned, already off into the trees but Finn caught him by the hand and spun him back toward him, ignoring the pounding terror coursing through his veins. “And what’re _you_ gonna do?”

“When I was out by the scrap parts, I saw a bunch of old imperial weapons—they could come in handy.” Poe’s hand slipped out of his grip, and Finn let him go only for Jannah to come up swiftly on the other side of Poe. His expression immediately shut down, and Finn fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“What’s going on?” she said, her gaze shifting over the two of them “My lookout said something about a breach in the atmosphere—”

“It’s Phasma. I can feel it.”

She blanched, swallowing hard, her gaze widening into a thinly veiled panic—Finn knew exactly how she felt. The same terror was pulsing through his own veins.

“We can get ahead of them if we go on the offensive.” Poe cut in, stepping just a touch too close to her to be anything less than challenging. Finn _did_ roll his eyes that time. “Booby traps, heavy artillery—”

“We don’t _have_ any heavy artillery—”

“My _ass_ , you don’t! What about all those—”

“The imperial weapons aren’t functional!” she finally cried, shutting Poe up for the half second it took for her to continue “They’re all destroyed—we destroyed them when we first came. We only fight to defend ourselves. We protect our home! If Phasma’s here, she’ll try to take us back.”

Finn pursed his lips, dread welling up in him as he put two and two together “You won’t fight, will you?”

Jannah shook her head emphatically, as if what Poe proposed was akin to taking on the whole of the First Order fleet alone “I can't risk it. We have worked hard for our peace—your war is not our problem!”

He let his jaw hang open, slack with disappointment and shock. He had forgotten that he used to feel this way—he used to think there was nothing to do but hide his head in the sand, run from his past, the life that had been torn from him, and the things he had been forced to do. He understood, as much as he hated it.

Poe didn’t.

“ _Our_ war? _Our war_ —the galaxy lives in _constant_ fear while you hide in your _Imperial_ barracks—”

“You don’t know what they did to us! Our families were slaughtered, we were taken as _children_ —”

“You and literally _everyone_ else in the galaxy! As if you’re the only ones who had your childhood stolen by this bantha-shit war— _Fucking_ _coward_ _!”_ he spat, venom dripping from every word as he shouldered his way between the two of them and toward the scrap metal yard again.

Finn caught him by the arm again, only for Poe to rip it out of his grip, glaring at him as if he was already one of them.

“Pretty great friend you’ve got there, _Buddy_. Wonder if she cares about anything at all.”

And he was gone, nearly taking Rose out as he charged into the distance, a plan already forming in his mind. Finn could practically hear the wheels turning in his pilot’s mind even as he fumed his way off into the trees.

His stomach twisted and his heart clenched.

“What the Hell’s going on?’ Rose jogged up, but Finn was too busy staring Jannah down, strangled by the disappointment.

As much as he understood the urge to run and hide—it was itching through his muscles all the way to his toes—he’d like to think he knew what the right thing to do was. Taking out Phasma would be a crippling loss for the First Order. Commandeering her ship could get them off this damn world and back onto their mission.

They had an opportunity here, and Poe was right. They _could_ do it, if they planned _now_.

“I never took you as the type to run away.” He remarked at his once-sister, his tone clipped, as hurt as he felt.

She sighed “Clearly you aren’t remembering—I’m _the_ _type_ to protect the people I love. These people rely on me, Finn. I won’t lead them back into their nightmares. Come behind the shield with us, you don’t owe the Resistance _anything_ —”

“I have a _family_ there—This is the _right_ thing to do.”

“ _Hello!?_ Anybody want to tell me what the _kriff_ is going on?” Rose cut into their moment, pulling Finn away from the fragments of memory—Jannah had protected him, Jannah had been ready with a fist and a sharp tongue toward anyone who said anything against him, Jannah…

Jannah had a crown of deep, circular scars around her hairline and throat, trailing down her spine and under her shirt.

She used to fight the First Order at every turn, but something had changed.

She had been sent to re-education. 

Who was he to force her back into the fray?

“Phasma’s here.” He finally cleared his throat, turning to Rose “Get Leia behind their shield and don’t leave her side—the future of the Resistance relies on it.”

He waited for her nod, eyes wide and mouth slightly gaping, her mind still catching up to his words—they had been lulled into a false sense of security on Endor, let themselves breathe for a moment too long. He didn’t know how the Hell the First Order had found them, but what mattered now was finding Poe.

His Force vision flashed through his brain again, leaving him sick and dizzy as he desperately ran through the trees to find his pilot. He had been bloody, and bruised, and terrified, looking at Finn like there was a fate worse than death laid out in front of him.

He let the link between them feed through his heart and draw him closer to wherever Poe was, a familiar tension loosening little by little in his chest the closer he got. Like a rubberband, sending Finn on just the right trajectory to fly back home to Poe.

He wouldn’t let him take on a whole First Order platoon alone.

* * *

Her heart was pounding, hiding in the brush behind the complex system of reflective shields, woven grass tarps, and holographic mind tricks that made up the camouflage for Jannah’s troopers. From the outside, Rose was certain that no one would be able to see their base—the bunk hammocks were gone, all piled neatly in the corner of the med quarters deep in the bowels of the old Imperial base, where Rose kept one of Poe’s blasters close by her side, sitting with the peacefully sleeping general.

She could hear the clunking of dozens of booted feet above her, all of the defectors holding their collective breath in the chamber with her as the danger passed over their heads.

Finn and Poe were still out there.

Her hands trembled, and she scrunched her eyes up tight, memories pushing their way into her mind.

_Mom had come rushing into their house, had locked the door tight and gathered up Rose and Paige from where they’d been sitting up under the covers of their shared bed—she could still feel the glossy pages of the picture book under her fingers while her sister had held the flashlight. It was Rose’s favorite._

_Something was broken in their mother’s gaze when she looked in their eyes, her grip was unrelenting on their shoulders as she guided them to the root cellar, shushing their questions and shepherding them into their hiding place like they were hunted._

_The door had blown off its hinges, the locks blasted away just as the world went pitch dark. There were tears on Rose’s cheeks, and her throat was too tight to breathe, let alone scream like she wanted to._

_Paige’s soft, familiar hand gripped onto hers like she’d disappear if she let go._

_Booted feet clunked around above the little girls’ heads. Mom’s voice was nothing more than a warbling tone, unable to parse out the words even with their little ears pressed to the door. Someone replied in a mechanical monotone, and it went back and forth and back—_

_Until the zap of blaster fire ignited the air, the smell of blood and ozone and a cry of “LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC” echoed into Rose’s skull. Paige held onto her. The boots clunked overhead, and Paige rubbed her back, covering her mouth to muffle her sobs._

Her hands gripping the cold metal of her blaster, she wished Paige was there.

The sounds passed over them and into the distance, leaving everyone silent and tense, waiting for the coast to be clear. Hiding underground like scared little girls all over again. Like children who still needed protection.

She had worked too hard to learn how to help people—to grow out of the dark misery of the root cellar on her desolate home planet, to fight for the family she’d lost.

She wasn’t about to lose what little family she’d managed to gain.

Poe and Finn were _still_ out there.

It had been several long moments since the footsteps had passed when Rose finally made herself move, breathing as deep and fortifying as she could as she approached the hidden threshold into the open air. She could hear Jannah’s urgent whispers behind her, blotted out by the thrumming of her pulse in her ears. 

She poked her head out to see nothing. No one. 

It was just the trees and the birds and the breeze through the leaves, the swish and clank of Stormtrooper armor a distant, fading backdrop in the quiet wilderness. 

“ _HEY!”_ a mechanical voice shouted somewhere off to the right, but not to her. 

A blaster went off once, a haphazard shot that sent her ducking for cover, following the rocky trail of brush and pretending her knees weren’t about to buckle under the weight of her nerves. 

More blaster fire exploded through the forest, and she heard a familiar voice calling out-- “ _NOW!”_

Relief swept up through Rose hearing Poe’s voice echo between the trees. There was a bang, a swoosh, and a sickening crack, resulting in the angry, frightened cries of helmeted Stormtroopers. A huge tree swung down to collide with the hard ground, and Rose could see everything now, the whole scene leaving her slack-jawed. 

Her friends had somehow managed to fell a gigantic tree using ancient-looking flares in a knob-hole. They had netted a mess of white-armored limbs like in some old cartoon, only to crush them under the trunk of the huge tree. 

It was most of a platoon, if not all of Phasma’s force, but it hadn’t been easily won-- Finn’s arm was haphazardly bandaged with a ripped off section of Poe’s shirt, and they were both bloody and glistening with sweat. Poe might have been limping just slightly, and Rose nearly rolled her eyes at that man’s inexplicable ability to injure himself. She almost stood up from her hiding place and shouted to her friends, she nearly revealed her position, thinking the danger had passed-- that was when she saw it. 

There were flashes of white and glimmering metal armor through the deep greens of the landscape behind the two men. Finn was scanning Poe, fretting over his leg and the blood running down his face. Poe was inspecting the bandage on Finn’s arm. They had no idea what was coming. 

Rose lifted her blaster without a clue of how to really use the thing-- it felt heavy and clunky, it didn’t sit properly in her shaky grip, and her voice caught in her rapidly closing throat. Still, she opened her mouth to cry out, to give them some kind of warning--

When a hand came up from behind and closed over her open lips. 

The instantaneous leap of terror seemed to come from all the way down in her bones, sending her whirling around and more ready to fire than she had ever been. 

Leia’s hard brown stare brooked no argument-- _be quiet_. 

Behind them, Finn and Poe were surrounded. Everything in her told her to turn around and help. Leia’s eyes were still stern and steady, saying in a barely-there whisper “We’ll get them back… it’s okay. We can't help them here-- not yet.”

She just shook her head-- they had to do something, they had to-- 

“Finn, look out--!” Rose heard, slicing through the trees to her ears. 

“ _FN-2187_ .” a cold voice cut into the clearing, quiet and somehow still able to be heard over Poe’s pained cry. She sounded _bored_. Rose wanted to throw up. “ _I should’ve guessed your little friends would be behind this--_ ” 

“Let him go and I’ll come with you--”

“ _Oh, really? You’ve grown attached-- you know how inadvisable that is._ ” her tone was chiding, like she was mocking him. Rose couldn’t see him, couldn’t tell what was happening, but Leia’s sharp gaze watched every second over Rose’s shoulder, her jaw going tighter and her lips pressed thinner as Captain Phasma gave the order to take the prisoners to the ship. 

“They’re too useful to kill. We have time--” Leia stumbled back once they were alone in the trees, finally allowing them both to breathe. 

Before she had the time to process anything beyond _they’re gone, they’re gone, the mission is ruined, they’ll be killed, the resistance is finished—_ Rose was running in the wake of the fresh boot prints in the grass. Chasing the stormtroopers who had taken her friends. 

It wasn’t until she reached the tree line that she realized that Leia was right. Her hope faltered in her chest, flicking like a dying flame as her friends were dragged up the gangway of a First Order Trooper Transport. 

Like the ones that landed in her town, just days before she and her sister became foundlings on a ransacked ruin of a planet. 

Determination prevailed where hope couldn’t, a fire building up in her gut. 

She wouldn’t let them die, too. Not like the rest of her family had. 

The General was standing tall when she returned, bacta wrappings still tight around her torso, only a makeshift cane giving away her need for support. Rose scanned up and down her superior officer, taking in the slight glazing over her eyes and the shuffle in her steps. The way her head listed just slightly to the side, like she wasn’t quite strong enough to hold it up. 

Dr. Kalonia’s voice in her head recited her training, and Rose strode over to the General on autopilot, inspecting her bandages and studying her swiftly deteriorating posture. Her eyes were getting more dazed by the second. 

It wasn’t unlike Poe after he first woke from his bacta-induced healing coma the day before. Or Finn, all those months ago in the medbay on D’Qar. Leia needed rest and fresh wrappings— maybe even more bacta injections. 

The general refused when she offered her help getting back to camp, rolling her tired eyes and saying something about how _Kes was right_ and how _you get one injury and suddenly they think you’re all washed up or something_. 

It was a good thing the camp wasn’t far, and Rose resisted the desperate urge to run ahead, to get into hyperspace and back to Finn and Poe as fast as possible. 

Her stomach was tied in knots, her mind racing as they finally broke into the clearing of the old Imperial base. 

Things were going on as normal— some defectors were setting the bunks back up, the tarps were being put back in their original places, tacked up around the base in a way that still obscured them from anyone who wasn’t searching for them. 

Hiding. They were always hiding. 

A wave of absolute wrath crested over Rose in seconds, swallowing her whole and leaving her cheeks hot and eyes pricked with angry tears. 

They had just left her friends behind. 

Jannah was talking to a group of her people, a map spread between them as she dispensed orders. Rose wasted no time figuring out what was going on before she was in the other woman’s face. 

“So, is this what you do, then?” She piped up, her words like daggers aimed at Jannah, but loud enough to still the whole camp. Eyes were on her, and she couldn’t care less “You live your quiet, peaceful little lives while the rest of us fight to our last kriffing breath? You hide in the ground when reality comes knocking on your atmosphere—?” 

Her voice was a harsh rasp, her hands shaking and clammy with sweat, every part of her tensed and trembling with the effort of her rage. 

Leia put a hand on her shoulder and stepped carefully into the clearing. 

“All we need from you, Jannah, is a ship to go rescue our friends— they’ve been taken captive—”

Her hands were up, placating and _pandering_ , and Rose wanted to scream. 

“They’ve been taken captive while defending _your_ secrets! The trap they set was to protect you! The stormtroopers was barely half a mile away—"

Jannah had a flush in her cheeks, her eyes hard but maybe a little misty as she closed the distance between her and Rose. Her voice was deadly calm, clipped as if she had any authority-- she spat “We have paid our due to the galaxy— lost our lives, our families, _everything_ for the sake of that woman and her twisted leadership. You do _not_ know what Phasma’s capable of.” 

“Well, she has Finn now.” Her lashes clumped together with tears that she refused to let fall, her throat tight and dry “You’re right— I have _no idea_ what Phasma’s capable of. But, you do. So, what d’you think she’s doing to him right now?” The idea made her sick, and it forced Jannah to swallow her tongue, her gaze looking haunted and her hand flying unbidden to her crown of needle-prick scars. What was going to happen to Finn and Poe? What was going to happen before Rose got there to save them? “He said you were like his _sister—_ this is _not_ what sisters do.” 

A sister holds your hand in the root cellar and bites her lip against her own fear so you can sob into her shoulder. A sister guides the path into the unknown when you’re all the other has in the world, and she teaches you how to fight to make your own way in this cruel galaxy. 

Sisters are brave and _hopeful_ and make sure that, if they can’t be there to fight another day, that you won’t be alone. 

Rose had Finn and Poe now, and Paige wouldn’t have left her otherwise. 

Jannah was _abandoning_ her brother. 

Jannah, who looked as if she’d been slapped. Her mouth was slack and her eyes were swimming with the conflict of it all— Leia was watching the two of them closely, her gaze burning into Rose. 

“I have a responsibility to these people— not just Finn. I’ve failed them before, and I won’t do it again.” She sighed, scrubbing a hand down her face “If I go with you, it’ll be the _only_ time. I have to come straight back.” 

Before Rose could catch up, Leia jumped in with “Of _course—_ time is of the essence, though. So…” 

Jannah nodded like she was agreeing to a death sentence “ _So_ , our ship is this way.”

* * *

He felt her go, more so than he heard it— the roar of the Falcon’s engines barely making their way through the driving rain.

He sighed. It was unsurprising, he supposed.

Rey needed this test, needed to solidify this newfound center of gravity, her identity finally settling into her DNA. Luke could distantly recall the thick air of Dagobah, and the deep-seated _need_ to see for himself— if the future could change, if the world could be different, if _he_ could be the one to change it.

His masters had told him it was in defiance of the Force, that the lives of his friends and the fate of the galaxy were always in motion, but now Luke had learned for himself. Yoda and Obi Wan had been right, but Luke didn’t regret going to Bespin for Han and Leia all those years ago. He had been right, too. He was a gray Jedi, and he wasn’t shackled to those rules anymore.

Neither was his padawan. To run out into the rain, to try and stop her from facing her fate— it would go against everything he had taught her.

Rey would go where the Force led her, and Luke could feel its tug in his own chest as well.

Wrapping his rough-hewn cloak tighter around him, he stepped out into the whipping wind and rain of Ahch-To. He felt every moment of his age as he put one foot in front of the other up the slippery steps of the mountains and between the craggy cliffs, running his fingertips along the walls of slick stone and saturated moss.

This was the place that had become his prison and his sanctuary, and had been for so long.

He could still feel the unbearable weight of his nephew’s collapsed ceiling crushing his back and shoulders, even when he crossed the invisible threshold from the miserable weather and into the miraculously still clearing. The grief of losing Ben was still almost too much to take. Rey was _young_ , it was time to follow her destiny, but could Luke do the same?

He wasn’t sure that he had what it took to face what was left of his sister and his best friend, wrapped up in that pitiful boy—Luke’s greatest failure. 

The gnarled tree in front of him thrummed with power— everything that he had hidden at its roots was pulsating with Force energy, as if they knew what was coming. What _had_ _to_ _be_ coming.

The texts were safely removed, buried somewhere in Rey’s effects, but that was alright with him. The sacred texts weren’t what he was looking for. He reached past the relics and ancient artifacts, past the low throb of the darkly inscribed triangular prism burning a hole into the deepest corner of the hollow trunk. Luke reached into the shadowy shelves until the exposed mechanics of his left hand curled around his old lightsaber.

He sighed, torn between the overwhelming sensation of being _complete_ again and the desperate desire to go back to his hut, let Rey go as the Force demanded—

But the tug under the center of his chest, linking him to his padawan told him just how badly she would need him. Her energy was confident, but erratic, his hands trembling sympathetically as her hands worked over the Falcon’s controls and his own reached out for the kyber on his shelf.

It glinted in his palm.

The last time he had unleashed the green blade, he’d created a monster.

“Conflicted are you, my old apprentice.”

He whirled around to face the intruder behind him—an unmistakable voice that he hadn’t heard in so long.

The glowing form of a short, green creature hobbled closer to him on his thick wooden walking stick, coming to sit on the short stump and patting the seat beside him.

“Master Yoda?” he choked on his old master’s name.

“Abandoned the Jedi you have.” He shook his head in the minute jerk of his familiar disappointment. “So long have you turned yourself away from the spirits of the old masters. Why?”

“The Gray Jedi pave a path to true balance—I knew how you felt about Qui Gon, I knew you’d disapprove. You led the council against the Dark Side for so long.”

His green gaze was penetrating and unimpressed “An answer to my question, that is not. Why turn from _me_ do you?”

The shame was as acrid as blood in his mouth, his younger self bubbling to the fore under the eyes of his old teacher “I- I failed you! I forgot all you’d taught me—I tried to strike down a _child_ out of sheer fear of what he could become—”

“Untrue. Untrue!” Yoda smacked his knotted little hand against the seat beside him on the stump now, demanding Luke come to sit this time “Not a _child_ was your nephew. What Ben Solo had already _become_ you felt in him. Beyond the control of even the greatest Jedi was his fall.”

Finally, Luke forced his legs to carry him to his master’s glowing side, barely able to look at him through the veil of his shame. Kylo Ren had already taken hold in Ben’s mind, he was already gone—but what about Leia? What about Han? How could Luke have ever faced them again, knowing that he hadn’t been able to save their only child?

“Long since forgiven you your sister has. This you know.”

“But Yoda, if I hadn’t given in at that moment, I might have at least been able to spare my students!” He still remembered every name and every face. He still closed his eyes at night to watch the smoldering ruins of his temple in his memories.

A familiar huff of exasperated air squeezed out of Yoda’s throat, his eye roll palpable through the Force.

“Responsibility for his actions no one will let this boy take! Force him to kill, did you? Abuse him? Cause him pain enough to create such thirst for power? Make him turn, did you?”

He paused, and Luke listened to the patter of the rain, distant and far-removed from the lightsaber in his hand and the jedi at his side.

“No, but—”

“Yes, responsibility you have.” Yoda cut in, reading his mind as he had so many times, so long ago “As all masters do at the fall of a padawan. But, not only yours is this blame. His own, and… and another.”

That brought Luke’s attention out of the rain and into the moment, a tremor of dark energy reverberating up his spine at the tone his master took.

“What do you mean? This isn’t Leia’s—”

“Not Leia, no.” Yoda let out a long breath, deflating as he took a pause. “For so long has he evaded our sight. I thought him dead, but the only one who learned well by your masters, you are not. Palpatine lives.”

He was frozen to the bone, his blood halted in his veins and his breath caught in his lungs. Subconsciously, he gripped tighter to the weapon in his hand, the memories of his father’s last act of compassion burning into Luke’s mind with a crackle of lightning and the scream of an eternity’s long fall.

“No… that’s- that’s impossible—”

“Challenge me, do you? The power of midichlorians you do not yet understand. An ancient, unnatural practice is the art of stalling death—of cloning. Be careful, you must. Finish what your father could not.”

His small, green hand came to rest against Luke’s hand, sending Force energy through him like a benediction. He cleansed him, revitalized him, and the tug beneath his breastbone became stronger and more insistent than ever.

He knew what he had to do as Yoda faded back into the dark night air.

His hands sure and precise, Luke fitted the kyber heart back into his melted lightsaber hilt, releasing a rush of energy into the Force as he ignited the blade and filled the hollow trunk with green light.

His age forgotten, his past failures settling into his bones as easily as they ever would, Luke bounded from the enchanted glen and back out into the pouring rain. He leapt down slippery steps and skidded to a halt by the door of his hut, shoving open the door and calling out _“C’mon R2!”_ over his shoulder. The little droid whirred and beeped, rolling out after him like nothing had changed at all. The two came abruptly to a stop at the edge of the meditation cove.

Looking over into the deep, tumultuous waters, Luke Skywalker breathed in long and slow, exhaling into the Force as if he was blowing the dust from an old speeder.

He held out his hand and summoned the 30 year old X Wing from the depths where he'd sunk it so long ago. It felt like coming home.

He had a padawan to track down, and unfinished business to attend to.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, hi! 
> 
> So, things have sucked recently, so I didn't get this finished until today. I had a death in my family, and things were rough for a minute there, but we're all doing better now. 
> 
> This chapter is LONG. All the chapters from here on in are going to be LONG. And graphic-ish? It's all gonna be okay, just know that haha! 
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> As always, if you like this fic, please please PLEASE shoot me comment and let me know. You guys are the best! Thank you so much!

It was reckless to lean into this connection; she already knew that much. It wasn’t safe to let him know she was coming.

 _I may have already made that point by telling him I was coming and then throwing him off a bridge_ , she mused, chewing her lip and breathing against the second thoughts swimming in and out of her head. Luke would be so upset with her.

Had she failed him?

Everything he told her throughout her months of training had hinged on the balance of light and dark within her—to balance her contemplation with action, her anger with love. More than anything, she was supposed to let her intellect guide her decisions and her compassion guide her lightsaber. She pictured herself walking a tightrope between the extremes, maintaining her balance.

She was letting her intellect guide her decision, right? She knew Ren could be turned because of their connection—even if it was manipulated by Snoke, she’d still heard him say it that first time. The conflict inside him was there to be wedged apart, and Rey was _cunning_ enough to split him open.

She could do it. Luke _couldn’t_ be angry with her for that. It was exactly what he’d done for Vader. Right?

Her grip shifted and settled on the hilt of Anakin’s lightsaber. Was her compassion what guided her? She considered her reasons for fighting him, and felt a tremor in her confidence. Rage threatened to swallow her whole and she tipped dangerously on her internal tightrope—she could feel herself slipping on the narrow, rainy bridge on Ahch-To all over again, being forced to her knees.

She wanted Kylo to _pay_.

Kylo Ren had massacred a school of young Jedi, he’d tortured her friends, he’d murdered his own father—she had to do this for Leia. If there was anything left of her son in that pathetic shell of a man, Rey owed it to her and to the Resistance, to bring him home. To face a trial, to _learn_ his _lesson_.

If she couldn’t do that, Rey would have to kill him. She would do what she _had_ to do to restore balance in the galaxy.

In her mind, she continued to visualize the tightrope she walked, darkness and light flanking her feet on either side as she followed the path set out before her. The anger was nearly overwhelming, but she stayed balanced in the midline of the Force, thinking about her _family_. Thinking about Leia when she pictured Ren’s face, trying to remember the last vestiges of humanity in him, she could hear Luke reminding her to breathe through her anger, to let it dissipate.

She set her coordinates and thrust the Falcon into lightspeed, trusting the Force energy flowing like a current through her, pulling her toward Ren, and Snoke, and _the_ _end_ of all of this. The Force would tell her where to go.

Somehow, the Star Destroyer Rey came up on was even larger and more impenetrable-looking than she thought it would be. Her eyes widened, and she forced herself to swallow around the leap of anxiety in her throat.

 _Kriff_.

She had to do this—it was the _only_ way. She had to try.

She could hear Poe in her mind reminding her to make sure she disabled the Falcon’s holo-message system before she was taken into custody, and felt Finn’s hand on hers as she guided the Falcon into the Star Destroyer’s tractor beam. She balled her hands into fists, flexing and contracting her fingers as a crackling voice came through the commlink in the control board.

“ _Your ship has been identified as the Resistance vessel, the Millennium Falcon; you have no clearance to land here. State your business and prepare to be boarded._ ”

The voice sent a shiver down her spine, and she wondered if this was Hux—the general who’d tortured Poe on The Finalizer before Ren got to him. The voice was sharp and icy, crystal clear even through the ancient commlink of the Falcon, and she took a deep breath as she replied.

“I’m Rey.” Her voice was steady, even as her heart fluttered in her chest “I’ve come for Ben Solo.”

* * *

 _“What exactly makes you think that_ this _would be a good time?”_

_“Well, we could just die without talking this out, if you’d prefer.”_

_“Who said anything about dying?”_

_The Force vision of Poe swam unbidden through Finn’s brain-- brown eyes, wide and wild as they stared at Finn, his face bloody—_

_Finn shook away the thought, swallowing the rising dread that told him they maybe should’ve hid with Jannah and the others._

_The link between them crackled and popped with irritation, and Finn didn’t know if it was his own or Poe’s, but the feeling coursed through his veins and snapped up through his words as the other man ripped off a section of his shirt, wrapping it viciously tight around the blaster shot that grazed Finn’s bicep._

_He winced, hissing through his teeth. Poe appeared less than sympathetic, a grim twist to his lips as he turned his back on him to dig through their scavenged bag of Imperial parts again. Finn could feel the emotions swirling throughout Poe’s Force energy, though. He could feel that fear, the deep-seated guilt—it was confusing. His energy felt nearly apologetic, but also_ hurt _. Poe was_ so _hurt._

_“I never would’ve left you, Poe.” He heaved himself up to his feet and went to grab the net Poe tossed out of the bag and onto the ground. Being closer to him still felt better than that morning on the cliffs, physically separate as much as emotionally. Now. At least, their bond was straining less under the barely-there distance between them. He wanted to reach out with his uninjured arm but Poe wouldn’t let him touch._

_“Don’t you dare try to set up that rope—I’ll do that. Your arm’s too busted.” He said, as if Finn hadn’t said anything at all. His voice was a little tight, and he cleared it as if he could hide from Finn._

_He pursed his lips at the taste of his kriffing attitude— “Oh yeah, cus you’re totally doing better than me. Your leg’s_ fine _.”_

 _“My leg and your arm would_ both _be fine if your friends had any type of kriffing backbone between them—”_

_“You don’t know what they’ve been through!” Finn nearly shouted, consciously having to reign in the bubbles of righteous indignance—memories of being inundated with propaganda, regimented, monitored, and broken down to basic parts, filled his mind. They lived under the constant threat of action against any and all individuality, burying the vague recollections of his mother’s bloodied and terrified face deep in his mind to try and stay sane._

_Jannah had scars—so many of these defectors had scars. Every nightmare, every flashback Finn had to his time on The Finalizer, was about avoiding those types of scars._

_The only reason why Finn didn’t have those same ones, the only reason why he had managed to choose a different path at all, was because he’d slipped out of line on the way to re-education._

_Because he’d heard a couple officers talking about some Resistance prisoner, and had an idea._

_Without Poe and Rey and Leia and Han, Finn might not be any different than Jannah. Would Poe hate him, too? If things were different?_

_“Ah yes, of course—no one else has suffered but them! The entire Resistance force hasn’t also had their lives stripped away, and fear is a totally valid reason to—” he dripped with sarcasm, and Finn rolled his eyes with enough force to send them all the way back into his head, taking a deep breath to fire back when they both stopped and turned, totally silent._

_He was only cut off by the tell-tale swish and clunk of Stormtrooper armor, coming off from the right. They didn’t have much time._

_Doing his best to swallow down the worst of the mess of emotions in his gut, Finn and Poe met each other’s gaze with a plan in mind._

_“So, if you’re setting up the net, what do I do?” he whispered._

_Poe dug back through the bag and shoved a handful of explosive flares into his hands “Put these in there—” he gestured over to the knob hole of a dying tree “We’ll lead them over here, I’ll round ‘em up, and then you light these suckers.” He grinned that sharp, feral grin that he got on his face when the thrill of adrenaline properly set in, and Finn was almost smiling despite his annoyance._

The Star Destroyer they were unloaded onto wasn’t one Finn recognized. The annoyance was back in full force, warring with his crippling fear—the cells were completely closed off except for a small window.

He was alone, with Phasma herself on the other side of that thick glass, her helmeted gaze sending prickles up and down his spine.

He couldn’t see Poe, but he _knew_ he was there. He could feel him through the bond, and, not to mention _hear_ him through the vent between their cells. He was tapping his fingers against the hard bench in the tiny room that mirrored Finn’s, making up a grating rhythm like he was playing a drum set. It set Finn’s teeth on edge, and he knew the guards wouldn’t be able to take it much longer, either.

 _“You—”_ a mechanical voice sounded on the other side of the wall _“Stop all that banging.”_

“What? What was that? I can’t hear you.” He heard Poe call back, and the anxiety twisted his stomach and clawed up his throat. The link between them was a tangled disaster, and Finn was unsure which were Poe’s feelings and what were his own, and the sleek walls of the cell made his hands clammy.

He refused to let himself tremble, though. Not in front of Phasma’s piercing stare taking in every weakness he might let slip.

Finn let himself slide back into the decades of sensory memory, letting his face be wiped of all emotion, leaving him standing at attention, ramrod straight and staring back at the dark void where his former superior officer’s eyes were. His gaze was steely and cool, even while his heart leapt in his chest.

 _“I said stop that!”_ the mechanical voice came again, punctuated by the singular, echoing crash of someone’s armored fist punching against Poe’s cell door.

Poe kept tapping, using his whole hands now, slapping harder and getting louder until Finn felt the sympathetic pain in his own palms, just an irritating tingle.

“Oh, I’m _so_ _sorry_ —is this bothering you? Am I supposed to be intimidated? You have as much authority as a woolamander, you’ll have to get in here and _make_ _me_ —” Poe shouted back over the frenzied noise, setting Finn’s teeth on edge.

There was a wave of single-minded purpose suddenly flowing through their bond, saturating every other jumbled up thought and feeling, sending a surge of terror through Finn when he figured it all out.

It was only a matter of time before somebody came for them. Poe was trying to buy Finn time before he was tortured—he was offering himself up on a silver platter, even with Ren’s Force energy stinking up the whole ship.

Poe had to feel that, too, right? He was more sensitive than he thought.

“Poe! Poe, _stop_ it!” he finally cried, breaking his challenging gaze with Phasma, eyes wide as he shouted toward the vent where he could feel the rubberband of energy trying to tug him closer.

 _“No talking, FN-2187.”_ Phasma snarled, but Finn couldn’t care less.

“POE!” he bellowed over the cacophony of sound and the current of Poe’s desperation drowning their bond, trying to keep his head clear “You’re not helping anyone by—”

There was a bang and the sound of a zap that crackled through the vent, and through the bond as well—Finn cried out at the same time Poe did, a brutal shock seizing his muscles when the man on the other side of the wall was struck with an electrified baton.

Finn’s knees buckled with the sudden jolt, crumbling down to sit on his own bench, a bead of sweat running down along his temple.

He heard Poe’s low moan through the vent, and could feel every inch of him trembling through their vibrating bond. Finn tried to shake off the jittery feeling lingering in his veins, breathing long and slow in the newfound silence of their cell block.

Finn’s heartbeat thumped through his ears, his body trembling, his muscles tense as Phasma’s penetrative stare still bore through the layers of glass and durasteel between them, studying Finn like he’d already revealed all the secrets she needed to ruin him.

She had said “ _You’ve grown attached-- you know how inadvisable that is.”_

Maybe he had already sealed their fates with that. Maybe she really did already know all that she needed to… Poe was in danger.

And he’d only get in more danger if he didn’t _shut_ his _kriffing_ _mouth_ —

“Anybody have a deck of cards? Is this gonna take a while?”

Finn bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, his ribs constricted and heart hammering wildly.

 _Kriffing idiot—this isn’t helping anything!_ He thought, focusing on the deep channel of energy in their bond, trying to will Poe to stop, _You’re just gonna get yourself killed!_

Poe stopped chattering immediately, a stroke of his energy reaching through to poke at Finn’s chest experimentally.

 _Finn?_ A familiar voice seemed to echo over a loudspeaker right next to his ear, right inside Finn’s head. His stomach flipped, and he wondered how he could’ve forgotten what Leia said. _Finn, is that you?_

She had mentioned it what felt like ages ago, back when their bond was still fresh and they were practically sitting on each other’s laps in her chambers. Leia had told them that they could communicate telepathically, if their bond grew strong enough.

_Yeah, it’s me. Why d’you always have to cause a scene? You’re gonna get yourself killed._

_I have a plan!_ Poe cried indignantly into Finn’s ear.

_Yeah? Does that plan involve causing a scene and putting yourself in danger?_

A heavy silence hung between the two of them, and Finn nodded to himself, letting out a sigh when Poe’s silence spoke for itself.

 _I mean, we’re already in danger, Finn—What was_ your _plan? Did you have a plan?_

 _The plan is to keep our mouths shut and try to figure out a way out of here!_ He snapped, his mouth not moving, but his lips twisting as he “said” it. Finn tried to school his expression, the unsettling prickle of Phasma’s eyes on him leaving a pit in his stomach and sending a ripple through the Force bond.

 _Well, how d’you know that isn’t my plan, too?_ Poe griped, and that time Finn couldn’t resist his eye roll.

_Your plan involved staying quiet? I have trouble believing that—_

_Hey, hey, hey—Listen to me!_ Poe waited for the bond to be quiet for a long moment, so long that Finn nearly reached out and nudged him again, before his voice started coming through again _This is the plan: I get myself taken in for interrogation—_

 _Nope. No way!_ Finn cut in, the breath suddenly leaving him like he’d been punched in the gut. The last time Poe had been interrogated by the First Order—

_C’mon, Buddy! Give it a chance!_

Poe reached out and delicately cradled Finn’s energy, curling up in his chest and shining out with a couple reassuring waves that Finn didn’t want to feel. He was distracting him, he was doing that martyr thing again, and Finn wasn’t about to be left on this damn ship all alone.

 _You still there?_ Poe’s voice came again, _Is this like a commlink, can you hang up on me?_

 _What’s your kriffing plan, Poe?_ Finn finally sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face and trying to shake the feeling of Phasma’s eyes on him. He burrowed deeper into the tug in his chest, feeling the other man’s energy brighten and curl around his, sensing his distress.

Finn’s throat went tight and dry very suddenly, consumed with a wave of indescribable warmth rising up in him, warring with the fear that had been his constant companion since they were captured. There was something about holding Poe and being held, even just through the Force, that seemed to change Finn’s life a little more each time. The urge to cry was immediate and embarrassing, and he stood abruptly, pacing so Phasma wouldn’t see his weakness.

 _The plan,_ Poe started, voice a little softer like he could feel everything just as acutely as Finn _, is for me to get interrogated while you find us a way out of here—you’re stronger with the Force, you know their Star Destroyers in a way that I don’t, you’ll think of something… When they don’t get anything from me, they’ll come for you._

A tingle ran up and down Finn’s spine, his long scar erupting into a maddening itch—he couldn’t tell if it was his own apprehension or Poe’s remembering Ren. Knowing what had happened to both of them last time they each ran into the guy…

Was Ren here?

_Poe—_

_When they come for you, you break away from them and get free—I’ll find you._

Finn swallowed hard around the nerves fluttering up in his stomach, his head shaking from side to side absently.

_You mean if you survive? You’ll find me then? This plan is bantha shit, Poe. Search your feelings, you know Ren might be here, after what happened—_

_Finn, if I live, I’ll find you—get us another TIE fighter or something._

The chuckle in Poe’s familiar voice sounded choked to Finn’s ears, and his feet guided him over to the vent between their cells without thought, as close as he could get to the other man. The bond between them was trying to tug them closer, through durasteel and shiny lacquered walls, pulling them and pulling them like the rest of the galaxy didn’t exist.

There was a pulsing headache at the base of Finn’s skull that he knew had to be feeling Poe’s pain—every nightmare he had, he woke up with this exact headache, remembering Ren.

He shoved down his own manic energy, even as his heart hammered against his chest and his lungs stayed constricted with panic. Finn breathed as long and deep as he could manage, and reached out, soothing the erratic edges of their bond. He embraced Poe’s energy with everything he had, as if he could physically pull him back flush to him and protect him—even now, in the _sarlacc_ _pit_ of this _stupid_ war.

No wonder Jannah had chosen like she did.

Poe entwined his energy with his, and Finn had something to say. The words caught in his mouth, poised on the tip of his tongue like they had been for months, for as long as he’d known the words at all. Still, they went unsaid—

“When the Captain made me aware of what she’d found on Endor, I just had to see for myself.” A new voice echoed into the streamlined corridor and through the vent. Rage flooded the Force bond, immediate and stiflingly strong as Poe clapped eyes on the newcomer outside his cell.

It was Hux.

“ _No_.”

Finn blurted it out uncontrollably, coming out as both a whimper and a hiss—he remembered finding Poe in that cell on the Finalizer, all bloodied and broken after Hux and Ren had gotten through with him. He remembered the black glove pulling at Poe’s hair in his Force vision, his eyes wild and terrified, blood and tears running down his face.

 _“Yes, FN-2187?”_ Phasma’s mechanized voice mocked him, setting a fire in Finn’s gut.

Finn glared out through the glass at her silently, no matter how much he wanted to beg her to set Poe free, or tell her just how badly he wanted to see her helmet on a spike—

“General _Hugs_ , I should’ve known that oily trail through the halls had to come from somewhere—your hair looks great, by the way. Really _slick_.” Poe’s voice was loud, purposefully annoying, but still steady through the vent. It was an impressive show, given the bubbling terror that Finn could feel in the other man where they were tied together.

“ _Very_ sweet, Dameron, very _brave_.” Hux all but purred, something in his tone sending a creeping shadow of dread into a corner of Finn’s brain that he hadn’t considered before. It was greasy and saccharine, “There’s no use pretending, though. We all know how _helpful_ you can be with the right leverage. What a stroke of luck Ren’s still on board.”

 _Poe—_ Finn tried to say, _Poe, this plan’s not gonna work, you’re just gonna—_

_If I survive, I’ll find you—I’ll find you, Finn, but no matter what, you have to continue the mission, okay?_

“You’d already be dead if it weren’t for the intel that your little Resistance friends were stupid enough to regroup. Without General Organa? You’ll be crushed within the week. I wonder, Commander, if you can’t help us find them?” Hux continued, and there was definitely something different in the way that Poe’s hackles had risen through their bond that made Finn desperate to see what was happening on the other side of that wall.

“The Resistance will not be intimidated by you.” Poe growled back, all his stupid jokes and pretenses thrown aside in favor of deadly seriousness.

Hux only laughed, a higher, more wheezy sound than Finn would’ve expected from someone who wanted to intimidate them—somehow, it still managed to send a disturbed chill through his bones. “We’ve heard that before, haven’t we?”

Poe’s headache was growing stronger, Finn could feel it like a superimposed shadow onto his own brain.

_Finn. Find Rey and Skywalker, look out for Rose, tell… tell Leia I’m sorry, okay?_

_Tell her yourself, you bastard—_

_Finn!_ Poe tied the chords of their bond even tighter, nearly tugging Finn bodily into the wall. He was _hugging_ him through the link, trying to pour as much emotion as he could into the electric connection that sparked in their chests. Finn was breathless, a ragged noise ripping out of him and reverberating in his tiny cell.

_Finn, promise me._

“How long did it take to break you last time? 6 days?” Hux simpered, and there was the unmistakable sound of a door releasing its vacuum seal, hissing as it slid away. “Let’s see if we can’t break that record.”

 _I promise._ He finally managed to force out, his palms sweating and his stomach clenching in on itself. _Poe, I—_

He tried to say it for what felt like the thousandth time. He tried to get the words to keep from sticking in his throat, past the lump of desperate anxiety that burrowed into the deepest parts of him. Phasma’s eyes were on him, and his own eyes were hot and swimming with tears that he needed to stop—

Finn breathed, trying to settle himself in the face of losing the most precious thing in his life—

But, by the time he got it together, Poe was being led down the cold, dark corridor, maybe for the last time.

 _Poe? POE! Poe, are you there?_ he tested the bond.

There was no reply.

* * *

“ _Testing, testing—d’you copy?”_

“ _Loud and clear_ —where’d you find these things, anyway?” Rose asked, turning over the ancient commlink in her hands.

“Imperial. Just like pretty much everything else we’ve got.”

“Except the heavy artillery, apparently.” She couldn’t keep the venom out of her voice, but honestly, she probably wouldn’t even if she could.

“ _Hey_ —I’m helping, aren’t I? Or did you forget who’s ship you’re in?”

Rose bit back a comment about how they were only there because of her in the first place. It wouldn’t help anything-- and Jannah _had_ supplied them with their ship, with enough bacta to raise the dead, and the patchwork of armor that Rose still had to adjust.

Wearing Stormtrooper armor, mixed with traditional Ewok weaponry and the blaster Finn had shoved at her, Rose had maybe never felt so odd in her life.

The little white cylinder in her grasp sat so strangely in her fingers now that she knew where it came from, like it was heavier because of its history. Rose looked down at it, studying it as if she could pick out the bloodstains of the first Rebellion in its glossy white surface. It was still so clean, after all that time and all that war.

Maybe that was why Stormtroopers were always dressed in their shiny white suits—to appear clean and untouched when in reality, they were the most terrifying thing in the galaxy.

She could feel Jannah’s eyes on her, burning into her where she sat, but she pretended she couldn’t. She didn’t _know_ , she didn’t _care_ , she just wanted to save her friends.

Really, Rose _didn’t_ care.

She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, clearing her suddenly dry throat and standing abruptly from her seat. The eyes on her seemed to tingle along her skin, like Jannah saw deeper into her than the armor over her chest and the impassive look on her face. It made Rose’s cheeks heat and her hands fidget.

“I should check on the General.”

“D’you not trust my bacta, either?” she replied coolly, her eyes never wavering from Rose’s face. Half of a wry smirk tilted her lips, but her gaze was almost _hurt_.

“I’m a medic, it’s my job.” Rose replied drily.

“Well, the only thing different here is that we use only enough bacta to _heal_ the person—y’know, so they don’t end up comatose while the ship goes down. Your General should be awake in the next quarter hour, if she’s not already.”

She turned away from Rose, gaping and indignant, to study the dusted over blasters and shields stocked in this bucket of bolts ship.

Rose was about to launch into some useless excuse for how heavy-handed she’d been with Poe’s bacta—it was so hectic escaping that ambush, he was _so_ concussed, the General might not even _wake_ _up_ , it was _so_ important that they have Dameron back up and ready to lead—

“How’re you feeling, General?” Jannah cut into her thoughts, not even turning around to where Leia had silently come to stand in the door.

There was no cane, there was no leaning in the threshold. She stood in the path to the cockpit with arms crossed and a blaster on her hip.

There _was_ a shadow of a grin on her face and a sparkle in her eye, trained on Rose.

“I’m _feeling_ like I should inform you that without Medic Tico’s speedy intervention, both Commander Dameron and I would be dead. I’d much rather be comatose with bacta than the alternative.”

Rose felt herself deflate with relief on her exhale, a spark of hopeful warmth lighting up in her chest when Leia flicked her gaze over to her and winked.

Jannah turned around on her heel, her lips pursed tightly and an embarrassed flush in her cheeks, holding out a blaster to Rose.

“Oh—I’m good, I’ve—”

“We’re infiltrating a First Order Star Destroyer.” She paused pointedly “You’ll be needing more than one blaster.”

Her gaze was hard and intense, and Rose had no choice but to hold the penetrating stare. Jannah’s eyes were light shades of brown and green, flecked with gold like a nebula of Endor’s colors—

“You ever even fired a blaster? What’re you doing on some deep space Resistance mission?”

She had hesitated in grapping the blaster Jannah had shoved at her, blinking a couple times to clear her head and flicking her gaze over to where Leia had disappeared. She could go to the cockpit and end this conversation right now.

“Our forces were ambushed on our way to a new base—the General and Poe were too hurt, but we needed them, so I was sent with them and Finn on their mission—”

“So, you’ve _never_ fired a blaster before?”

Paige had “taught” her to use a blaster a few times. Rose knew how to clean it, and charge it, and keep it maintained no matter what the climate of the system they were on. Rose would be good with blasters— _great_ , even—if she could just _aim_ the kriffing thing.

“Never, never _successfully_ , no. My sister tried to teach me—”

Jannah rolled her eyes, taking a couple steps back from Rose as they both seemed to realize how close they’d been standing.

“Ah, yes—the _perfect_ sister.”

“She wasn’t _perfect!”_ Rose snapped, the rush of prickling heat coming to her eyes making her vision swim and humiliation clench around her heart. Deflating, she scrubbed away the single tear that managed to escape down her cheek, sure that she was embarrassingly red. “She was just… She was _mine,_ and she was _brave,_ and now she’s _gone_.”

The engines of the ship roaring through hyperspace were the only sounds to break the silence for a long moment.

“These people are all you have left now?” Jannah finally took mercy on her and breaking the tense hush over the cabin “Finn and Poe and Leia?”

Rose shrugged, refusing to cry again, forcing herself to take deep, even breaths.

Jannah nodded.

“C’mere.”

“What?” Rose blurted, blinking in her surprise. Jannah just rolled her eyes, but the smile was gentler. More real.

“Come over here—I’ll teach you how to actually hit something with that thing.”

Rose wasn’t sure what she expected.

Jannah was taller than her. By quite a bit. She became acutely aware of this when Jannah had her stand facing the long corridor to the back of the ship—and used her hands to guide Rose to lift the blaster. They stood back to chest, Jannah’s arms on either side of Rose’s, her calloused hand coming to rest, barely there, under her own on the trigger.

Rose couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. Her hand was steady, though, as she listened closely to Jannah’s instruction.

The inside of her arm brushed along Rose’s shirt, bare and soft, and she was _not_ staring. She might have noticed, though, the white marks of deep, circular scars in a neat, measured row. They went straight down the length of the veins in her arm, disappearing under her own shirt and mismatched armor—they matched the ones along the ex-Stormtrooper’s hairline and down her throat.

“Okay—that thing right there, d’you see it?” she gestured off down the hallway, straight ahead. There was a shirt hanging there, and Rose nodded. “It’s reinforced with a couple cushions and a durasteel plate. Think you can hit it?”

She swallowed hard. “Um—anything down there that you’re particularly attached to? If I miss?”

Jannah laughed, reaching over Rose to flick a switch just under the trigger, "There-- set to stun. Just shoot your shot, Flower.”

Rose took a deep, measured breath, a flush of pink going all the way up to her ears.

“O-Okay.”

The trigger was tighter that she thought it would be, it took more effort to pull, but when she did enough, she knew it.

The smell of ozone and fire sparked in the air, and a jet of light shot cleanly through the dark corridor to the target.

Rose was swept up in a rush of adrenaline. Jannah was nodding, satisfied.

“Did I hit it?”

“You’re a better shot than most Stormtroopers.” She stepped back and away from Rose, her body heat gone and leaving her just a little chilled, but when she glanced back the other woman was smiling “We’ll get them back, okay?”

She almost believed her. She had to believe her at least a little, she supposed.

 _They’ll be okay._ She remembered from eons ago, looking down at the blaster in her hand, _You have to tell yourself that—it’s the only way to not go crazy._

* * *

It started as an itch under his skin. A low-level burning and prickling that only annoyed him when he thought about it.

Finn flexed and released his fists, pacing the floor of his cell, five steps one way and five steps back, feeling terribly alone now that Poe’s cell was empty behind him.

Phasma was still there, her gaze zeroed in on Finn, cataloguing his every move.

He didn’t speak.

He told himself that it wasn’t out of _fear,_ or some latent sense memory _demanding_ that he follow her orders, even though the thought loomed large in the back of his mind.

She watched him _impossibly_ closer.

Finn told himself that he was just trying to focus. He had to think up some type of escape route and a way to get to Poe while there was any of him left.

As if on cue, the sensation under his skin intensified from a minor itch to a nauseating crawl, like tiny insect-like creatures dancing across his nerve endings, sending shooting sparks of tingling pain up his spine. He wanted to gag, he could feel every second of it as it spread through him from the base of his right bicep, throughout every inch of his body. Like some type of injection, icy cold in his veins.

Finn bit his tongue against the scream in his throat.

They were using an interrogation droid on Poe.

Finn had never experienced an interrogation droid’s injection for himself, but somehow, he still _knew what this was_ , as if Poe was right there and could tell him himself. Finn just _knew_ , the prickling becoming a burn in his blood, getting stronger and stronger until it took all of his energy to keep standing, let alone silent.

 _She_ was watching him as he sweated and squirmed, fists flexing, the taste of blood in his mouth as he desperately fought for control of himself.

When he thought it would never end, he dropped himself as inconspicuously as he could onto the bench in the back of the cell.

A whimper bubbled up his throat, unable to be contained. He balled up his hands and tensed every muscle in his body to try to steady his trembling. Clammy sweat had beaded on his brow, his upper lip, his breath starting to come quicker and quicker.

_“FN-2187. Report your condition.”_

He heard it as if it was an echo down a long tunnel, the pain cresting and cresting, higher and higher—he kept waiting for it to lessen, sure he’d lose his mind if it didn’t.

 _“FN-2187—That’s an order.”_ Phasma repeated, slapping her armored hand into the door of his cell with a jarring bang.

Finn nearly jumped out of his skin, his mind a haze of throbbing agony, morphing into something new as a fresh wave of _something_ was pumped into Poe’s arm somewhere in this kriffing ship—

“I don't... I don't take orders from you!” he cried, hearing himself speak as if he wasn’t in his own body. His voice was strangled, ground out through his teeth, too afraid of vomiting if he opened his mouth.

Through every ounce of whatever this was, he did his best to breathe, to focus on the Force, to try and block out Poe’s pain like Leia had _tried_ to teach them.

It didn’t work.

He felt fevered, his mind swimming through new and past visions as the reality of his cell faded away: _Poe was in the cave of the abandoned base on Crait, he was inching toward the vulptex that was going to attack him… Rey swam into focus, her face lit up by a crackling lavender light—red and blue blending together and bathing her face. Her eyes were dark and wrathful, her hair was plastered to her wet head, droplets of rain in her eyes… Then, there was Poe again, looking defiant, spitting on Hux’s boots and declaring his allegiance to the Resistance—Finn seemed to hear that on a loop, creating a sick soundtrack of Poe’s distant, agonized voice… "The Resistance will not be intimidated by you, the Resistance will not be intimidated by you, the Resistance will not be intimidated by you"_ …

 _A through line of every image, every desperate moment, was the face of a terrified woman, haloed with a head of tight curls. Backlit by a coppery golden light, she looked like some type of angel, but her face was bloody, smudged with soot, and she was anything_ but _peaceful._

_Her face blended in and out of Poe’s—looking at him with a gloved hand tugging back his hair and desperate fear in his eyes. Like he was about to lose something precious forever._

_“General Hux…”_ he could hear somewhere far away-- Phasma was talking into a comm, _“No, but I do have an idea. Have you been using the interrogation droid on the Resistance prisoner?”_ her voice was cool and deadly calm, and Finn hated her—was this real? He didn’t know if this was happening or not—was he in re-education? Did he ever save Poe Dameron at all? _“Try operation 58-2K… Just checking something. Do it.”_

All at once, the pain reached a new height, ratchetting up into the atmosphere—Finn felt like he was burning up, on the inside of a star, about to explode as electricity raced to the core of him, every bit of him _fried_.

Like when the Stormtrooper had tazed Poe.

This time it was worse, though. This time, it felt like a bolt of lightning struck him through and _kept going_. It lasted what felt like an eternity, imprinting itself onto his bones and tangling up his veins. 

When it passed, it all passed at once. Suddenly, Finn was alone with his throbbing muscles, aftershocks making his teeth chatter and his entire body tremble like a tuning fork.

Poe had passed out. It had to be.

Through his heart hammering in his ears, Finn could just make out Phasma’s voice, smug as she talked into her comm, _“Get Ren down to The Southwest Chamber, and bring your prisoner. I know how we can_ all _get what we want.”_

Finn tried to keep his eyes open, tried to force himself to keep what was left of his wits, but before long, the world was absorbed by empty blackness. He fell back onto the bench, eyes rolling up into his head, his last thought being about how the _Hell_ they were supposed to get out of this mess.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all. 
> 
> This was ROUGH. This was REALLY rough. You're gonna like it, this is the end of the "really rough" stuff-- the rest is fun climax and wrapping up the last of the loose ends. But, first, you have to get through this one, and it's a doozy. 
> 
> Just know that everything's gonna be fine <3 
> 
> This is the darkest hour for our trio-- they all have moments throughout this chapter and the next where they do things that are going to test their ability to stay true to their cause, and the idea of doing the right thing, and keep themselves from slipping into the Dark Side of the Force. 
> 
> The thing that is happening with Kylo isn't what you think it is. That's all I'm gonna say about that. ;)
> 
> Okay! As always, leave me a comment if you love it, if you want more, if you want to tell me your favorite part <3 You guys are the best. You really, really are. 
> 
> Enjoy! Things are about to get better!

The ship started to shake under their feet as they breached the Star Destroyer’s air space—the tractor beam pulled them in, and Rose’s palms started to sweat. She gripped her second-hand commlink in a tight fist, swallowing the pit of dread stuck in her throat.

Leia took the lead on their route inside—the old Imperial shell of their ship was confusing to the Star Destroyer’s command deck, and the plan was to appear like a ghost vessel from the old war. It wasn’t as if it was abnormal to come across the ruins of ships, empty for the past 3 decades, floating through deep space. It was a believable ruse, but only if they disconnected all power, staying perfectly still and silent.

Rose held her breath. Leia sat stock still in the pilot’s seat. Jannah’s gaze was intense enough to burn holes into the window in front of them.

The only light in the darkness of their cockpit was reflected off the First Order ship, illuminating the ex-Stormtrooper’s face as she chewed the inside of her lip.

Had she even _seen_ a Star Destroyer? Since she defected?

The scars were barely noticeable from Rose’s angle, but she knew they were there. A crown of deep-seated trauma rested around her hairline—Rose wasn’t attuned to the Force like Leia or Finn, but she didn’t have to be to _feel_ the terror rising in the other woman.

She wasn’t sure why the urge to take Jannah’s hand became so overwhelming, making her shove her hands into her pockets for something to do with them. Rose blamed it on being a medic—she wanted to help, she always wanted to make people feel better. She liked comforting people.

A confused voice from the command deck of the Star Destroyer broke into her thoughts, crackling through the dashboard of their “ghost ship”. It tore her out of her reverie, blinking the image of Jannah and her scars away, feeling a squeeze around her heart.

 _“Once we’re in, they’ll send a search party up to make sure the vessel is clear.”_ She remembered Leia saying, walking through the plan again _“The goal is to not have to fight, and try to keep from alerting the command deck to our presence for as long as possible.”_

_“That’s where I come in.” Jannah had replied, digging into a pack she’d brought, and whipping out a long, woven cloth of dark material. Portions of it were sewn carefully with reflective shields and glossy lenses. “We’ve gotten good at camouflage over the years—back when we…”_

_She had paused, her gaze going shadowy for a moment before she blinked whichever memory it was away, clearing her throat and forging on “Well, these will keep us covered and prevent them from seeing us unless they look closely, or if you do anything too crazy. Stick to the shadows. Follow my lead.” She pushed her hair back from her eyes “The holos and mirrors should keep us unnoticed until we can find your friends.”_

They each had a cloak wrapped around their shoulders, tied tightly to keep them from getting caught on anything.

They landed with a dull, metallic thud in the First Order hangar, and Rose tugged her camouflage even closer to her, her heart hammering and trying to remember to breathe.

Jannah looked like she was about to be sick, but managed to nod to Rose and Leia in a silent moment that said _Good_ _Luck_ , before masking her face with the hood of her cloak. Rose pressed the button and activated the holograms on her cloak, but she didn’t feel any more hidden than before.

Not until she looked around and saw that Jannah and Leia were all but entirely _gone_.

It wasn’t until she felt Leia’s small hand in hers, and Jannah’s calloused one in the other that she could breathe again. Her blaster was out of reach on her hip, and for a panicked moment she thought this was a terrible plan, there was no way they could take this on, they’d be killed, they’d be _noticed_ —

But they weren’t supposed to shoot their way out of this. Not yet.

Leia’s hand squeezed hers, comforting.

The gangway to their ship hissed open, and the clunk of Stormtrooper boots came echoing up the ramp.

She supposed it was kind of anticlimactic. There were no blaster shots, no dramatic escapes, or running for their lives.

The stormtroopers came up, and they silently filed out, invisible to their helmeted gazes.

The hangar was _huge_ —she could feel the expansive space around her, but didn’t dare look around. Rose kept her focus on the chain of hands bracketing her. Leia was just behind, and Jannah leading them on. BB-8 rolled around at her feet, refusing to be left behind.

She and Jannah had both fought the idea of the little droid coming along, but Leia wouldn’t hear any of it.

_“They lost their family, too.” She’d argued, arms crossed and brow furrowed “Besides, we’ll need a droid to talk to the ship. It’s the only way to bypass the security codes for the prison blocks.”_

It was a better argument than Rose could fight, and Jannah seemed totally beyond finding the words.

So, BB-8 was rolling at the back end of Rose’s cloak, narrowly avoiding getting kicked by Leia behind them.

It was worth it, though, once there was a hyperdrive port in sight. The corner was small and dark, in a little alcove that looked all too inviting as they rushed across the giant hangar and down the hall—someplace where they’d be less exposed. Rose felt like she could take a deep breath again as they reached it, forming an invisible wall with their bodies to hide their little orange droid as they plugged into the port. It took a long moment for the astromech to hack into the Star Destroyer mainframe, cooing and whirring in a contemplative way that set Rose’s teeth on edge.

Their dark, quiet corner couldn’t stay hidden forever. They didn’t have much time.

There was a beep, a trill and two longer beeps that seemed to echo in the dark, shiny corridor, sending her gut into knots. Jannah’s too, if the way her palm was sweating and fingers squeezed around Rose’s were any indication.

No one came running around the corner, nobody seemed to hear or _care_. A whole platoon of stormtroopers marched by, but not one moved as if they’d heard the calls of the droid.

She nearly rolled her eyes—it was a wonder that these stupid assholes didn’t get invaded more often. They were pretty kriffing easy to fool.

Jannah nodded, reading BB-8 loud and clear “Cell block A7. This way.” She whispered, tugging their little train of rescuers down the hall and into the winding labyrinth of shiny black twists and turns.

Cell block A7 was deserted. Rose felt the familiar creeping dread up her spine, smelling ozone and seeing a thin spatter of blood in the cell that was assigned to Poe. Finn was nowhere to be found.

There weren’t even any guards.

BB-8 was turning themself in circles around his human’s tiny chamber, cooing in a distinct and heartbreaking pattern, like a whining baby.

Unable to take it anymore, Rose slipped her hood off her head and the mask off her face, dropping the hands of the other two women, who were just as dumbfounded as her.

“Something’s wrong here.” She finally said,

“I feel it, too—there’s been a disturbance in the Force.” Leia replied, taking off her cloak as well, her face lined with grim anxiety. “I can feel a presence on this ship that I haven’t since…” she swallowed hard, her gaze flicking around as if someone would appear at any moment “I’m endangering the mission, I shouldn’t have come.”

“You’re telling us this _now?”_ Jannah hissed.

“If you can feel that person’s presence, can you feel Finn and Poe?” Rose ignored her, too focused on her General to care about some snarky stormtrooper.

Leia grimaced “Technically, yes. I might be able to get them—but, it’s a different connection, it—”

The clang of boots at the end of the corridor sent them scrambling for cover, Rose pulling her hood back into position and Leia pressing herself as close to the wall as she could without literally becoming a part of it.

A platoon of white armor paraded by, barely a meter away from their hiding spot, as if they weren’t even there.

 _“I hate it when she does this.”_ A mechanized voice grumbled toward the end of the line, just barely audible.

Another voice shushed the first from under their helmet “ _Shh—don’t say that too loud, or you’ll be next. Besides, it’s not like we’ve gotta watch or something. We just set up The Lace and leave_.”

_“But you know what they’re gonna do to that guy—”_

_“Shut up—you’re gonna get us re-educated!”_

The hissed voices faded down the hall, and Rose felt like her ribs were too tight to contain the violent beating of her heart.

All of them ripped away their masks and hoods again when the group had passed.

“Leia—we’re gonna need you to find them _right_ _now_ , or there won’t be much left of them.” Jannah’s voice had the dark edge that spoke of past experience, and Rose couldn’t help the question bubbling up her throat.

“What’re they gonna do?” She didn’t want to know, she _really_ didn’t.

Jannah shook her head, her lips pursed against bile or tears, Rose couldn’t tell. Her hands trembled as she gestured up to the scars across her head.

“They use The Lace to tie you back together.” She choked out “But first, they take you apart.”

* * *

He woke up in a place he’d only dreamt about.

The room on The Finalizer had been smaller, more like a cell than a chamber like this one.

Aches and pains rose and fell like the tide through his blood, every muscle throbbing with the beat of his weary heart. Finn tried to move his arm, bracing himself for the pain it would no doubt cause, but not for the impenetrable resistance he found.

His arm _wouldn’t_ _move_.

His eyes flew open and the panic immediately sent him into a frenzy, forgetting his pain and writhing against his bonds instead.

 _It was a dream, it was a dream, it had to be a_ —

Finn’s wrists and ankles were soldered into shackles of white light, binding him into the thin air of the expansive room. The lights were dim, but he could see the thin chain of liquid-filled pods, bonded along the insides of his wrists, up to his bare shoulders and chest. There was a trail of them that he could feel fused to his back, up and down his scarred spine.

The chain ended in a crown across his hairline, sitting heavily against his temples. It glowed a dim red light, and a whimper slipped past his lips before he could swallow it.

 _“FN-2187_ .” Captain Phasma’s voice reverberated to him through the darkness, incredibly close and somehow also echoing from a distance. He had never felt more exposed, suspended from the dark, polished floor and completely helpless in the expanse of the chamber. He shivered, from the chill of her voice or from his missing shirt, he didn’t know, but he could make a safe bet _. “I seem to recall you skipping out on this last time I ordered you to report to Re-education.”_

Given a limited set of options, Finn chose to feed his rage instead of his panic, letting his wrath build up in him rather than give Phasma the satisfaction of knowing just how deep in his nightmares she had gone.

“My name is _Finn_.” He declared, putting every ounce of his effort into being steady and clear “FN-2187 is not my name— it’s not _anyone’s name_.”

“ _Soon, you’ll be craving any name that anyone can give you. You'll be grateful, FN-218–"_

“THAT’S NOT MY NAME!” 

His voice bounced from wall to wall, his eyes finally finding Phasma’s gleaming armor in the inky dark background. She was standing behind a podium— a control panel to the left of him, only visible in his periphery. It wasn’t like he could turn his head too far. 

He could take a guess at what that panel controlled, tugging experimentally at his restraints once more. 

“ _You’ll be a good little soldier in no time._ ” She said, and it sounded too sincere to be a threat. 

It was a _promise_. 

Trying to breathe into the Force, Finn found himself restrained _there_ , too. It was like seeing through a screen where there used to be a clear picture. Finn’s heart leapt, hammering against his ribs as he fought for every inch of composure. There had to be a way out. He searched his feelings—

“ _Ah, our Guests of Honor.”_ Phasma mocked, as General Hux opened the chamber door with a sharp hiss, a convoy of stormtroopers behind him “ _Just in time, General. Did you inform the other guest of our little party?”_

“You think I’d really tell Ren? In _my_ moment of triumph? Oh, Captain, I never took you for someone so _simple_.” He hissed “I brought my prisoner, what’s the plan?”

 _“It’s for_ all _of us—”_

“Well, maybe Kylo gets _our_ sloppy seconds for _once_. How about it?”

Phasma made a vaguely disgusted sound behind her shield, but she kept her mouth shut beyond that. 

General Hux had a sour smile on his face, twisting his expression somewhere between malice and glee, but Finn didn’t care about that.

“Where’s Poe?” he spat, desperation tensing every muscle in his body, tightening his throat “What did you do to him?”

His voice bounced again, against the unforgiving walls —he felt like he was floating in a tank of ship fuel, the inky blackness sticking to him as he waited for Hux’s answer.

He only smirked, his pale face and fiery hair making him look like a spectre in the dark.

“Finn?” came a familiar rasp, loosening something wild and terrified and _hopeful_ in Finn’s chest. Hux snapped to the Troopers hanging in the threshold, and they marched on into the space, boots clunking against the tiles as they dragged in a ragged body.

Poe was mangled. His shirt was stained with sweat and blood, and he trembled almost too hard to lift himself up from where he was sprawled. He couldn’t manage to lift his head, his curls damp and hanging over his forehead, obscuring his face as he looked at the ground. He _knew_ Finn was there, though. The Force Bond let loose a sequence of stuttering chords, sending a swell of love through his chest that made him gasp.

At least he could still channel this much of the Force. 

“Poe—no matter what they do to me, it’s not your fault. It’s okay, it’s—”

“ _Is_ it?” Hux simpered, voice barely containing his laugh “It’s _okay?_ I don’t think he’s going to agree with you—not once we make all this clear. See, your little friend has had a rather taxing time, he’s just as _obstinate_ as I remember him.” He leaned down pointedly, condescendingly, toward the hunched form of Poe, and Finn jerked uselessly against his bonds.

“ _Commander_ _Dameron_ —” Hux said, reciting it like a line in a comedy, or some twisted call-and-response. Poe dug his fingernails into the floor until he was in white knuckled fists against the dark tile. “ _Where_ is the Resistance base?”

Silence consumed the room for a long moment, before Poe turned his head just far enough to spit on Hux’s boot. His growl echoed up from where he still looked down at the ground “The Re… _The_ _Resistance_ will not be intimidated by _you_.”

In less than a blink, Hux’s expression went from sweet to snarling, and he kicked out with the boot Poe had spat on, knocking his shackled arms out from under him and forcing his hand to splay out to catch himself. He stomped his heel down, _hard_ , on the fingers of his left hand and there was a scream from both Poe _and_ Finn when his bones crunched, making Finn’s stomach flip sickeningly.

“You _Bastard! I know_ where the base is-- _leave him alone!”_

Poe howled, his breathing labored and erratic, shaking with the aftershocks. Finn tried to reach out with his end of their bond, and it felt like the first time all over again—Poe’s energy was immediately defensive, vibrating like he had never had someone reach out like this. Like he was still in Private Room 12 on D’Qar, having one of those nightmares again.

“... F’n, don’t…” Poe finally managed to say, his gaze fixed on his swelling hand cradled in his lap, still fighting for breath. 

_We_ are _having a nightmare…_ he thought miserably, inching through the bond to hold the other man close in the only way he could _. We are in an absolute nightmare_.

Hux pulled up Poe’s head by his hair, and ripped his face up to meet Finn’s.

That was when everything clicked into place.

It was his vision all over again, played out in context, in real time.

Poe had blood dripping down from his hairline, a black gloved hand in his hair. His eyes were wide and wild as he took in Finn, hovering above the floor, tangled in Phasma’s web.

Dread threatened to swallow him, hopelessness creeping in and taking root at every point where the chain on him dug in and latched to his body. He knew what they were planning—Finn was just a tool to them. Just a tool to break Poe down—

“Is _The_ _Resistance_ intimidated now?” Hux whispered next to Poe’s ear, somehow managing to still be heard loud and clear through the huge chamber. Finn tried to shake his head, or indicate _somehow_ that it was okay, that Poe shouldn’t try to save him if he couldn’t. He couldn’t focus enough to get into Poe’s head and be _heard_ like before, only strong enough to brush their energies together and hold _tight_.

Finn had been a weapon for so long, but he’d finally been able to be something _more_ with The Resistance, and with _Poe_. Whatever happened, he refused to be something used at the disposal of the First Order again.

He opened his mouth to find the words to say it, but Hux was faster.

“Captain Phasma? You know more about this contraption than I do. What _exactly_ is going to happen to our insubordinate Trooper?”

“I’m _not_ a Trooper!” Finn cried, only to be ignored.

_“This is The Lace—our Re-Education system. A delicately linked chain of individually latched doses of Nashtah toxins and stem cells. The toxin burns away brain matter in the frontal lobe, the stem cells rebuild fresh tissue. The result is a docile, easily manipulated soldier who is more receptive to the First Order’s message.”_

Finn didn’t bother trying to hold back his bitter laugh, “Bringing order to the galaxy? Promoting progress?” he remembered it all—it had been his life. It had been a lie.

 _“Bringing an end to the unproductive chaos of the so-called New Republic, FN-2187.”_ She snapped, enunciating every letter of his old number. A fire lit itself in his gut, burning through him as he fixed his gaze on her. 

He could do it. He could _kill_ her. 

Poe was still taking in the state of him, tears running down his cheeks, lips bitten raw from the hours spent with the interrogation droid. He was desperately shaking his head like he could make it all go away, facing a choice that Finn knew he wouldn’t be able to make. Finn could barely meet the other man’s gaze without his own tears spilling over.

They both knew what was coming.

“Don’t do it, Poe. It’s okay—"

“Finn, I _can’t—_ "

A jolt of electricity crackled through him, cutting them both short as their bond ignited with the shock of it. Phasma pressed a button on the dashboard in front of her, and the chains of pods making up The Lace dug their strange, claw-like talons into his flesh, securing them flush against him. It stung, and he felt himself tremble, though he’d never admit to it.

He tried to block Poe out of their bond to keep him from feeling his fear, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the other man’s energy, entwined with his. His only source of comfort. He _loved_ him. He loved him _so_ _much_ , more than _anything_ \--

“You can end this, Dameron.” Hux had still been gripping Poe’s hair up until then, when he loosened his hold, even stroking his fingers down the back of his neck as he let go. It was like some mock show of concern, his tone soft and syrupy. Poe was grinding his jaw, fury and disgust rising up and running through the both of them in a frenzied current, making a jumbled mess of their bond. “Tell us where the base is, and this’ll all go away.”

“You’re a _liar_ —”

“Words hurt, Commander.” He sighed, his patience running out behind his little act, “Besides—what kind of _agony_ you’d experience, feeling that Re-Education through your _Force_ _Bond?_ That’s something we’ve never seen before, and frankly none of us want to clean up after something like _that_.”

 _“Getting attached…”_ Phasma sighed, taunting them _“Highly inadvisable.”_

A tight knot of conflicted energy settled itself in Finn’s gut, and he didn’t know if it was Poe’s or his own. There was a light, mechanical whirring from the chain around his head, and he was bracing himself, trying to summon any and all of the Force that he could. Facing the love of his life, and the worst of his nightmares, and the end of the Resistance effort as they knew it, Finn swallowed around the taste of blood in his throat.

“Where is the Resistance Base?” Hux snapped, but Poe gave no answer.

He supposed she was right. Getting attached _was_ inadvisable—Poe was shaking his head, lips pursed tightly and his teary eyes glued to where Finn was trapped. Both of them were _trapped_.

“Where is the Resistance Base?” Hux ordered again, all false-sweetness evaporated into a General’s tone. Poe just shook his head, unable to say anything at all.

They weren’t getting out of this this time. There was no trick, there was no rescue mission, there was no hiding from it. Their mission had failed.

The mission had failed, and all that was left was him and Poe, and if there was one last thing for him to do while he still could, it was this.

“ _I_ _love_ _you_.”

It was easier to say than he ever expected that it would be. After all the times the words had caught in his throat, it rolled right off his tongue and into the still air. Finn held his gaze, refusing to let his own tears fall while Poe was forced to tremble on the floor in front of him. If he was about to forget who he was and why he had fought and what the _right_ _thing_ to do was, then he at least wanted Poe to know that one thing. The most _important_ thing.

“Poe, it’s okay—It’s gonna be okay.” He said it for him, and he said it for himself, and he said it with the last, half-crazed hope that maybe there was some way out, even if it was just through dying. “I _love_ you.”

His lips wobbled dangerously, and the prick of the needles at Finn’s temples threatened to end everything—the Force was getting stronger in his chest, despite the shackles binding his wrists and ankles—

“ _CRAIT!”_

It was such a ragged sound, exploding out of Poe’s mouth, that at first, Finn couldn’t place what he’d said. The shame that flooded the link between them told him all he needed to know, though, watching Poe’s trembling, mangled hands as he looked away from Finn’s gaze and stared down at the floor. He wished that he would look back up, that he could see that Finn didn’t blame him.

“… The… the Res-sitance Base is on… on Crait.” he forced out, ending up in a bereft whisper. “Jus’ let him… let Finn go, jus’ _please…_ ” 

Hux slapped his hand around the nape of Poe’s neck, pulling him in close to hiss the words right into his ear, “Was that so hard? You’re always _helpful_ in the end, Dameron.”

Poe pulled back, jerking away from the General’s hold on him so hard that he toppled back on his ass— disgusted, shivering, broken. 

The silence hung heavily in the chamber, only punctuated by Poe’s stuttering cries and the low electrical hum of The Lace. Phasma was the one to finally break it, her mechanized voice no longer frightening to Finn. 

He wasn’t scared. There was a rage building up in him, coming from every cell of his body, every dark corner of his mind. There was a flickering, foreign feeling coming through the bond. He’d felt it so many times from Poe before, but _here?_ At _the end?_

The link between them flooded with _purpose_ , unmistakable and violent, even while the other man kept his gaze fixed on the floor, hiding his face. The feeling merged into his chest, feeding into Finn’s own rage, shaking as it filled him up like a bomb.

_“I’ll proceed with the re-education—”_

“I’m gonna _kill_ _you_.” Finn growled. It wasn’t a threat—it was a _promise_. It burned like acid in his mouth. He was going to keep that promise, looking from Hux to Phasma. “D’you hear me, Phasma?”

Hux only laughed that high, reedy laugh, digging his gloved hand back into Poe’s curls and tugging his head back up, forcing him to watch.

“ _You won’t even remember saying that in a moment.”_ Phasma jeered. 

After that, many things happened at once. When he would ask Poe what exactly happened, even years later, the other man would only shrug, just as lost in the details as Finn was. 

There was the sudden strike of thousands of needles piercing his skin and starting to burrow into his flesh. There was a shout, the zapping of blaster fire, a deafening _crash_ , and the sound of what seemed like a hundred footsteps rushing in.

The last thing Finn felt before the battle started was the sensation of falling through the air-- his hands and feet free to hit the polished floor. He used the very last bits of his dwindling willpower to keep his legs from giving out under him, feeling the rush of the Force flowing back through him.

* * *

Rey felt something twist in her gut while her convoy of Troopers led her through the winding halls to Ren’s quarters.

There was something shifting in the Force, flipping her stomach and making her hands sweat. They hadn’t been doing that before, had they? She hadn’t felt afraid before, had she?

There was no mistaking Ren’s quarters when the door hissed open. The haphazard slashes of a lightsaber were burned into the far wall, cutting deep gashes into the grate that had been there before. She could feel the rage and humiliation still heavy in the Force around the scene. There was rage and humiliation all around her, though, stifling the air in every corner of the room.

The only place where the deep-seated sense of shame didn’t linger was at the pedestal at the center of the space.

A melted hunk of black material was set there, unmistakable, even after the deforming power of fire, thirty years of time passing, and even having never seen Darth Vader for herself—Rey knew exactly who this had to be.

“This is the helmet of my grandfather.”

She willed herself not to jump at the sudden voice, expecting something mechanized, another helmeted monotone from a new generation. But Ren’s voice was soft, his bare face staring back at her from where he stood in the corner.

“ _Sir—she was unarmed, except for this.”_ The lead stormtrooper said, taking one step in toward the dark, looming figure, handing over the lightsaber they’d taken off her when she arrived.

Ren took a long moment to run his fingers over the hilt, the shadow of a smile tilting his lips before he spoke again.

“Leave us.” He quietly commanded the convoy of Troopers, and Rey watched them hesitate for just the slightest moment before complying. “When you said you were coming, I figured there would be more violence involved. Instead you’ve only knocked on the front door and returned my family’s lightsaber. How uncharacteristically _civilized_ for someone like _you_.”

He tracked her movements as she took a slow round about the room, unable to keep still. She pretended her heart wasn’t leaping out of her chest, visualizing the narrow bridge of Ahch-To in her mind, balancing on the thin, slippery rock. It steadied her. It reminded her of her purpose here, even as the fear and anger in the room seemed to bleed into her own energy.

“Is it not what you expected?”

“Your quarters?” she finally deigned to reply “They’re smaller than I thought they’d be. I always got the impression that you were so highly respected by the First Order, Ben.”

“ _Don’t_ call me that—”

“But they treat you like a little boy. Even your Stormtroopers hesitate before following your orders.”

She turned to look back at him, and saw the freshly-slapped expression hanging on his face, a little thrill of adrenaline racing through her blood as he played into her hands.

“Did you see that? Did you feel it in the Force when he hesitated to give you Anakin’s lightsaber?” she smirked “The most anonymous and lowly of your organization thinks you’re not trustworthy—”

“I have proven myself! How’s your little rebellion without _The Great General,_ huh?” he hissed, crossing the room in nothing more than a few great strides “I am the _blood_ of Darth Vader—they are right to fear me! I’m more powerful than they could ever imagine.”

“You are the _blood_ of Leia Organa and Han Solo, too.” she met him step for step, even on her shorter legs “Was it worth it? To try _again_ and _again_ to gain the trust of those who will _never_ stop manipulating you--?” She was falling out of what her plan had been and into the pit of her anger, slipping back on her delicate path between light and dark. 

“SHUT UP!” his gloved hand flew up, and Rey tried not to flinch in the face of his impending blow, only to choke instead.

His hand never reached her physically, but it had never been intended to. His fingers were pressed into a tense grip on the air, and the Force energy between his fingertips was mirrored by the walls of Rey’s throat.

Her eyes watered, and she leaned into the bond Snoke had forged in them, burrowing into the cracks of Kylo’s chest. She searched his feelings, searched her own, and found where they blended together in a mess of confused identity and feeling betrayed by family that they didn’t understand. She also saw the secret—she saw what he _wanted_ , more than anything else. Rey wedged herself into that crack, where the light got in, and rooted herself down into the Force energy she found flowing between them.

Breathing came easier after a long moment of desperate gasping for air. Ren was easing his grip, but the look on his face said more than that.

He wasn’t loosening his grip— _she_ was. The bond between them was widening with her presence, forcing Ren’s hand open as she settled into her power.

She took in long, deep breaths, chest heaving with the surge of energy rushing through her as she pushed Ren away. He was shoved to the ground with the force of the energy field that rippled out from her as she freed herself from his grasp.

He looked at her as if she had started to _glow_ , as if she was some divine creature—as if no one but a supernatural, superintelligent, entirely _perfect_ being could be the one to push him to his knees. To force his surrender.

Anakin’s lightsaber flew from his grip, knocking against the floor and rolling to a halt at her feet.

Sucking in a breath and letting it out slowly, she balanced on her internal tightrope and concealed the urge to roll her eyes, to tell him just how mediocre he was—he was just like everybody else. 

Swallowing the rushing anger, Rey made herself smile.

“They—They can _never_ understand the depth of your _power_.” She said breathlessly, carefully shielding herself while his disbelieving gaze swept over her, looking for a lie.

“… Really?” he finally breathed; his malice curbed by how desperately he wanted to hear it—

She only nodded “Why d’you think they don’t trust you? They know that if they let you really know what was going on, they could _never_ restrain you again. You’re stronger than them all, Ben.”

Realization was dawning on his face, buying into the dream of what she was saying. She tried to pity him—he must’ve been so tormented, so paranoid, so _desperate_ for approval to fall for this. It was okay, she didn’t _need_ to believe it. It didn’t matter that she was manipulating him, too.

 _Did_ it?

She just needed to get him home to Leia, get him to see her again, let the sight of her, alive and well, blow open the light that Rey had cracked into. She couldn’t do this alone.

“Come with me. Come back with me—I’m the only one strong enough to match you. Train with me—you don’t have to be a Jedi, you don’t have to be a Sith! True power comes from balance in the Force. We can bring that balance, but we have to do it _together_.” She said “Join me and destroy the First Order. Come see your mother again—”

“My mother is _dead_.” He cut in, but the venom in his voice was dwindling—he acknowledged that Leia _was_ his mother, even.

She was getting through, she could feel the longing in him—he was _relieved_.

“Your mother is _not_ dead.” She enunciated each word, hoping to whoever might be listening that it was true. Luke had said she was alive—that had to be enough. Would she really trust Kylo Ren before she trusted Luke? “Ben, Leia is alive—search your feelings! You can see her again!” Rey bent over and picked up her borrowed lightsaber, going against every instinct she had to hold out the hilt to the man sprawled on the floor. “Take up your bloodline so your grandfather can be proud—be _Anakin’s_ grandson again.”

The hilt of the lightsaber hung in the air between them. Rey, waiting with bated breath, and Ben, watching her closely, slack-jawed and still skeptical. That keen spark in his dark eyes was still roving over her, searching out her true intent, and Rey could only hope. She could only hope that he would do it. That she could stay poised in her gray status—if it came down to a fight, she wasn’t sure she’d manage.

Maybe he really could still be saved.

That was when his gloved hand reached out to hers, taking the other end of the lightsaber and using her grip on it to help himself up to stand, watching her all along.

“The Supreme Leader has demanded you be brought before him.” He said dumbly, standing far too close. She didn’t dare move for the sake of her mission, not wanting to piss him off, but not liking the intensity of his gaze on her face, either.

“And?” she prompted, trying not to sound as uncomfortable as she felt.

“And, if he’s as manipulative as you say, we’ll need to take him down _together_.”

Something in her chest seemed to unwind that she hadn’t known was knotted. The dark gleam in Ben’s eyes seemed lighter, less oily than before.

She had done it. She had him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'ALL WE'RE SO CLOSE! 
> 
> This chapter took a really long time-- getting Rey's POV was so difficult, but I finally got it right. I'm proud of it, and I really hope you love it. 
> 
> As always! Comment if you like it! Please, let me know, it always means so much to me!

Many things happened at once.

First, it was Hux’s smug face, clicking his commlink and saying “Set a course for the Crait System— Outer Rim.” 

Then, it was the sudden sound of blaster fire, encroaching fast from down the corridor to just outside the chamber door.

He couldn’t help the shriek behind his teeth as the thicker syringes across his hairline started their relentless press into the bone of his skull. Finn writhed against his bonds, vibrating with a bone deep rage and terror only matched by the pain of the needles pushing into him. He tried to connect to the Force, and he felt the surge of purpose flooding the link between him and Poe.

Poe, with Hux’s hand still tugging his head back to watch Finn’s undoing, had looked helpless and tortured until  _ right then _ .

At that moment, his eyes changed.

He wasn’t looking at Finn anymore. He was focusing every fiber of his being— the wrath, the fear, the  _ hope _ , and everything in between— on one single point on the ceiling, past Finn’s limited range of vision. 

Even the air in the room seemed to waver in the seconds before the deafening crash shook them all— a huge support beam of the high ceiling unhinged from its place, collapsed to the ground. Dust and debris flew, and broken pieces of the smooth, dark floor were scattered. But that wasn’t the only thing.

The support beam landed just inside Finn’s periphery, where he watched as it crushed the control panel for The Lace. It sent Captain Phasma running for cover, crying out in shock.

It also freed Finn, who was left struggling against air where his restraints had been, before he dropped back down to the floor. The Lace was disabled, but it still dug into him, every move sending a new shock of pain jumping along his nerves. But Finn could care less— with adrenaline coursing through his veins, igniting his anger, he sought out the glint of Phasma's armor through the clouds of dust. 

All of it, from start to finish, happened in just a few moments-- in the split seconds deciding between their lives and deaths.

The door banged open, the blaster fire from outside finally joining the chaos in the chamber. The shots rang out, and Finn whirled around expecting Stormtroopers. 

Instead, Rose, Jannah, and Leia breached the chamber in a blaze of red flashes, taking out the guards even as more stormtroopers came running to investigate the sound.

Finn’s heart squeezed at the sight of them, hope reigniting itself in his gut. 

His feet were bare, but at least they were back under him— he didn’t waste a second of time. Neither of them did. 

Finn rushed toward Phasma, finally releasing the tightly wound coil of his rage, using the pain of the un-injected syringes still latched into him as fuel for the fire. A swarm of stormtroopers had flooded the room, though, hiding her from view. 

Poe gathered his remaining strength, sucking in a breath and feeling the adrenaline burst through their bond like a contact high. He took his shackled hands, broken and not, and drove his fists up and into the groin of a still-dazed General Hux. 

_ “ALL GARRISONS TO THE SOUTHWEST CHAMBER, ALL GARRISONS.” _ Phasma cried into her comm—Finn could feel the fear and hope rippling through the Force at the same time that he heard her frenzied command pierce the air.

“We’re gonna have company!” Leia shouted to their friends.

“If  _ company  _ isn’t here yet, then what’s  _ this?” _ Rose yelled back over the hail of lasers. She was holding her own, though, helped by BB-8, who dodged their way through the crowds sniping at the ankles of rushing troopers.

Jannah was shooting to disarm. Her impassioned speech about the wrongs of the First Order, and the way that these stormtroopers had had their lives stolen, passed through the air and built the backdrop of the battle. Her voice weaved in and out from under the pained shouts and blaster fire of battle, drowned out by the sound of Finn’s blood pounding in his ears.

And  _ that _ was when Finn finally spotted Phasma.

She spotted him, too.

Finn had always assumed that terrible moments—moments where the whole galaxy as he knew it could shift for the worst—would happen in slow motion. Like watching his platoon follow the order to massacre the townspeople of that Jakku outpost, or Paige Tico spiraling her wrecked X Wing into a First Order dreadnought right before her sister’s eyes, or the split seconds of realizing the lump on the floor in front of him just a short while ago had been  _ Poe _ .

He consistently believed that terrible things might happen slower than real life, as if to signify their importance, or give him a leg up to stop them—until then, he had always just done what he could. It hadn’t been enough, yet.

Phasma raised her blaster, not at Finn, but over his shoulder, past his line of sight. He knew that was where Poe was—he could feel his energy through the Force, a phantom ache in his knuckles corresponding with every strike the other man landed on Hux. Adrenaline was racing through both of them, and Finn knew that his pilot had no clue that Phasma was eying him.

And, for once, things really did happen in slow motion.

She fired, and at precisely the same moment, Finn raised his hand. He couldn’t even sense the sting of The Lace still clinging to his arms as he jolted into action, the Force coursing through his veins in tandem with his rage and fear.

The red laser erupted from her blaster, only to freeze in thin air halfway between Phasma and Finn’s raised hand. The space between them was so full of barely contained Force energy that the air went hot, swirling like a drought-baked desert. The battle continued on around them, but time slowed as Finn focused every modicum of his energy into pushing that laser back.

It was like trying to open a stuck door. Like there were just one or two catches keeping him from blowing time back into place, shoving that shot back into Phasma where it belonged.

In the background hum of his mind, whirring with Force energy and the hammering of his heart in his ears, Finn could still hear Jannah’s impassioned shout to the troopers around her:  _ “… This isn’t what you were made for! You were stolen—from your families, your lives, and your very thoughts!” _

The images of that face—that woman he’d dreamt of for so many months, beyond his control and understanding—flashed into his mind’s eye.  _ She was haloed by golden light, her terrified face smeared with blood and soot and grime, and now he could see it: the fire behind her. There were lifeless, crumpled bodies around her on all sides. The woman was the last one alive, an inferno engulfing the remains of a town he had never seen before. But this time he knew, at one point, that town had been his home. _

_ Two stormtroopers held her by each arm, and he heard the mechanized female voice that had commanded him for so many years. “Kill her. And make one last sweep for survivors—kill them, too. We have what we came for.” _

The echoes of crying children sent Finn scrambling for purchase back in reality, feeding the growing pit of anger in his gut.

It gave him that last push, sending Phasma’s shot back into the muzzle of her own blaster. It popped and sparked, short-circuiting.

Feeling as if his power was opened full-throttle, Finn launched himself toward her.

After all, he’d made her a promise.

* * *

Snoke’s chambers felt oddly familiar. It was as if she’d been there before, but there was no way. Never, even in a dream, had Rey seen those red guards or those particular wide windows into the void of space. The cold, streamlined surfaces of the rest of the Star Destroyer became even more polished and sharp the closer they got to the throne room, Rey’s Force energy coming through with a new clarity. 

She felt  _ powerful _ . Like she had lightning bottled up inside her.

She was  _ so _ close. She could end all of this in just a few moments—she’d bring Ben back to his mother, she’d bring Snoke to his knees, she’d make them answer for the  _ ruins _ they’d made of the galaxy.

She looked inside herself, and only found her single-minded purpose staring back at her, the bond that Snoke had fabricated between them now rippling with her own power. She was still wedged into the cracks between Ren’s ribs, feeling the cautious, heavily shadowed  _ light _ she found there and using it to reaffirm her plan—it was  _ working _ .

It  _ was _ working, right?

There was a tug in her gut—something beyond Ren, her plan, The Resistance, or even  _ Leia-- _ ushering her on into the brightly lit throne room of Snoke’s chambers. For a split second, she felt the bitter twang of fear clutch her heart, a wave of alarm bells ringing up from the center of her being and filling her ears. She shook her head against the swell, trying to focus. She was so close. She could end all of this. She could do it for her friends, her mentors, and the sake of the galaxy.

Once she liberated the galaxy and ended the First Order—once she proved what she was capable of—Rey could finally have a life. She would finally be known as more than just some abandoned little scavenger, she could prove that she was worthy of—

Rey swallowed around the rising tide of uneasiness, suddenly feeling as if her steps were guided, like she’d had one too many drinks or… or a leash around the center of her chest. It pulled her along, a spike of acute terror shooting up her spine, so consuming that even Ren was flicking his gaze over to her. Even through the thick shield she’d worked so hard to put up against his Force energy, she could feel her grip slipping. He knew something was wrong, and he was far from trusting her.

Not even Kylo Ren could be fooled forever by someone _in_ _awe_ of his _power_ —

“So, this is the girl you’ve been so  _ concerned _ with.” Snoke’s voice sent a shiver up her spine, and she felt Ren’s grip get rough with her arm, shoving her forward. She growled, her senses getting more muddled the more she realized she was not in control—“The Force is strong with her. You were right to bring her to me, Ren.”

“Thank you, Supreme Leader.” He mumbled, his eyes following every tiny movement of the deformed creature in the center of the chamber. Rey couldn’t help but stare.

“And what’re  _ you _ looking at, my  _ Dear?” _ his voice went from a simper to a rumble, and she put all her effort into grounding into the floor, trying to clear her mind even as her legs started to tremble under his milky, lopsided gaze.

“The face of the most hated organization in the galaxy.” She willed her voice to be clear and sharp “It suits you well, Snoke.”

The low, rumbling laugh reverberated throughout the space, even in the inside of her mind, bouncing around her skull in a way that left her feeling sick. “You stand in the presence of the greatest being in existence, young one. The most powerful being in the galaxy, and the legacy of Darth Vader himself.”

Her mind was fogged to the point of near-dizziness, as if she’d been drugged, the wall she’d so carefully built between her and Ren crumbling down. There was something very wrong here.

She had delved deep into Ren’s energy, found the most twisted parts of him and twisted them more—she’d  _ used  _ him like a  _ Sith _ . But now, he was using her back. She felt him probing back into her intent now that it was opened, his grip on her arm becoming bruising and hostile.

“Who are you, Rey of Jakku?” Snoke spat, his voice coming from all sides as she physically shook herself against the crawling feeling of something inside her mind. What had she done--? “Did you really think that  _ you _ could manage to take me down at my own game? To reach into the bond  _ I  _ created in you, and not have me deep enough in you already to know your secrets?”

She heard everything from a distance, as if she were in a tunnel, but she could feel Ren’s steadily climbing anger like a cancer in her gut.

“You… you  _ did _ create the Force Bond?” he asked, voice quiet and deadly, hiding the tumultuous, volatile swirl of feelings ripping through the both of them. All she could do was listen, her shame leaving her rooted to her spot, staring at the shape of Snoke through her swimming eyes.

“Of course, I did.” Snoke snapped as if Ren were a child, slow on the uptake “How else could I trust that you would bring her to me?  _ I  _ had to leave  _ every crumb  _ in order for you to find her—and then,  _ she  _ came to  _ you! _ Simple child.”

Indignance mixed an unstable cocktail that Rey could feel choking up her throat, but now she was finally thinking clearer. Now, she could tell the difference between her emotions and Ren’s, and that frothing, miserable combination of sensations belonged entirely to the man across the bond. Ben Solo was nowhere to be found—she didn’t know if he ever had been, or if that had been manipulated by Snoke, too.

Now, she could finally feel the tight clench of Snoke around her heart and pumping through her veins. Rey could see the internal tightrope that she was supposed to be walking, the family and the love that she was supposed to be fighting for, and she was so far into the darkness that they were barely a pinprick in the distance.

She had failed.

“But I sensed it! I found her on Endor—”

“She wasn’t on _Endor!_ You would have only drained our resources, again. The blood of _Vader_ —” he scoffed, and Ren’s boiling point was getting close enough to burn “You have disappointed me, again. And this will be the last time. Her presence here will draw in Skywalker, and before he arrives, you will _prove_ _your_ _worth_ to me.”

_ Skywalker _ . This was all a tool to capture Luke—and she played right into their hands. She would have to defend herself. She would have to defend her master, or she could never forgive herself.

_ Oh, Luke, _ she thought,  _ I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t ready. _

Just then, many things happened at once.

First, it was the vicious hiss of a lightsaber igniting, Ren crying out in his rage. “I have proven myself to you since the beginning! I will be more powerful than you, I will be the greatest Sith the galaxy has ever known—” he shouted, about to charge the throne.

Then, the ground beneath their feet shook. A ripple of power disturbed the Force like familiar voices carrying on a breeze. Downstairs, somewhere on that Star Destroyer, something had collapsed. Something was breaking apart, and  _ someone  _ used the Force to make it happen. Rey felt two—no, three—presences in the Force that sent the air gasping back into her lungs.

Finn, Poe, and Leia. With Snoke’s blinders lifted from her mind’s eye, Rey could very nearly see them. Her friends—her  _ family _ .

Something was very,  _ very _ wrong.

She had to end this. End this, and save them, and get the Hell out of there.

“Yes, young one.” Snoke purred as she blinked and felt awake for the first time in hours, “I can feel the rage in you, Rey. _ Fight _ —strike each other down and claim a place at my side.”

He lifted his deformed hand and her own moved as if she was a marionette doll. Snoke moved her hand to grip the hilt of Anakin’s lightsaber, and Rey flicked her eyes over to Ren’s hard, keen gaze. He had murdered so many people. He had tortured her friends, sent the most prolific Jedi of modern memory into hiding, committed massacre after  _ massacre _ .

Rey took a deep breath, and set her feet back onto her tightrope. Her hands trembled around her blade, and she exhaled her anger. She told herself that she forgave Ren, she tried to bury her wild, howling rage.

She buried it with her shame—failing Luke, Leia, The Resistance, and Ben Solo. Maybe she had failed him the most.

If she didn’t use her anger to fight, she couldn’t be turned.

She would not kill.

“You tricked me—My mother is alive? You  _ used  _ my mother to get your little Resistance into my ship. That crash was you, wasn’t it?”

He lunged at her, forcing Rey to lift her weapon and block his attack. His red lightsaber hacked against hers, his rage meeting her despair in a clash of lavender light.

“I had  _ no idea  _ anyone else was here—Ben, I only came for you!” she tried to say, gritting her teeth against the effort of holding him off.

“Filthy scavenger scum—” Ren advanced after her as she stumbled away, staying balanced on her internal beam, only to find that she had no inspiration to fight.

Was she only a scavenger? Rey almost yearned for the banal sands of Jakku, trembling for the simplicity of what she knew. She should’ve stayed in her place.

What had she done?

Snoke cackled in the background of their zapping and parrying blades, some sick entertainment for some sick, deformed monster. Ren’s gaze was black as the void of space outside the window, the last shadows of the scar Rey had given him on Starkiller still able to be recognized in the harsh light.

It twisted her to remember it. The first time she’d wielded this weapon—her only friend, crumpled and beaten in the snow, ready to accept her own death. What was different now? She had been ready to die then, and she was ready now, but what had changed?

_ Do I deserve to live? _

Ren corralled her around the room, past the red-clad guards and into the close proximity of Snoke himself. His dark hair flew around his face, sweating with the exertion, trying again to find acceptance in the First Order.

_ Finn’s strong with the Force. Even Poe could take up the mantle. Between the two of them, with Leia’s training, they could take my place. _

_ This doesn’t have to be my job. _

“Strike each other down! Use that hatred burning within—” Snoke cried, his laughter a constant, chilling reminder of her failure—

And then there was suddenly no red blade coming down on her. Ren was still there, before her, with his teeth bared in a snarl. His bangs were in his eyes, his shoulders heaving with the exertion as the sudden change registered in Rey’s mind.

Snoke was sitting on his throne, rigid as a droid, until there was a hiss and familiar buzz of a lightsaber slicing through flesh. The smell of the cauterized wound left everything hovering in slow motion, as Supreme Leader Snoke’s misshapen head toppled from his shoulders and into his lap. The body slumped.

Rey couldn’t help the scream from behind her teeth, using what little air she could get into her frozen lungs.

Ren was watching her as she watched the scene before her, taking some sort of manic glee in her horror and shock. As if she was impressed.

“You were right.” He broke the silence with a proud grin, too many teeth catching the light as the guards drew their weapons and advanced. They only made it as far as a few steps before Kylo Ren’s sights were on them, using the Force to toss them into the air like a child’s toy, crushing bones with audible pops and screams that flipped Rey’s stomach.

“You were right.” He repeated, breathless.

“Stop  _ saying  _ that—”

“They would’ve never given me what I deserved. I would spend my whole life fighting them as much as my enemies.”

Her throat was too dry to force words out, shaking her head desperately, as if to clear it from this nightmare.

“Join me, Rey—only I can teach you the true extent of your abilities!” their drawn lightsabers were the only sound in the chamber, and Rey only just managed to move her thumb enough on the hilt of her weapon to turn it off. “As the new Supreme Leader, I can bring about order in the galaxy—"

She shook her head.

“I’ll never join you.” she choked out.

His grin melted, the glee in his eyes only shuttered by the malice of another rejection.

She  _ hated  _ him. Despite every part of her trying to maintain balance on that thin, gray line, Rey was suffocated by her hatred of the monster before her. The monster she helped to create.

“Very well, then.” He growled, lifting his blade to strike her down, and she refused to close her eyes. Rey stared deep into his black eyes and dared him to kill her, waiting for the blow.

“REY!” a shout echoed through the chamber, a true Force Bond settling into her gut where Snoke’s had dissipated. The emotion flowing through was nothing but sheer panic, and the sudden shout from the threshold made both her and Ren whip their heads around to look.

Luke stood in the doorway, arms raised as he sent Ren sailing back and away, into the far wall of the chamber. Rey stood dumbly, her legs still glued to the floor as she took in her master, sparking just the tiniest leftover bit of hope in her chest.

“Rey, it’s time to go.” He rushed up to her, gripping her arm in a way that made her instinctively tug back.

“Master, I—” was all she could rasp out.

“We’ll talk about it later—there are bigger things at play than Snoke. And definitely things bigger than Kylo Ren.” He reached out again, ushering her to move toward the door.

“But, what about—”  _ him _ , she gestured back toward Ren where he was tugging himself to his feet.

Luke shook his head with a dark look in his eyes “He’s not worth the effort to kill him—this place is rigged to blow, c’mon!”

He managed to pull her away, just as Ren let out a wild cry, and Luke paused to raise his hand again.

Ren met him in the middle, though, his own arms up and slamming his own Force energy into Luke’s. He shouted with the sudden strength of his nephew’s power, putting all his energy into shoving him back. With a deafening crack, the older Jedi clenched his left hand into a fist, sending Ren’s own hand into a mangled, unnatural shape.

He screamed, agonized, and distracted enough for Luke and Rey to run, leaving him to his injuries and his fate.

“Why’s the Star Destroyer going to explode?” Rey found her voice, jogging down the labyrinth of corridors on autopilot.

“Because R2 and I rigged it to.” Luke replied, his tone harsh. “You got lucky—your friends downstairs kept most of the base occupied while you had your little opera up here.”

“I got  _ lucky? _ Luke—”

“Rey.” He halted, turning and making her stop with a hand on her shoulder. It wasn’t unkind, but his gaze was hard and icy. “You didn’t do anything that wouldn’t have happened anyway. Ben Solo has been gone for a long time. All you did was muddy the waters, and show your weaknesses to the First Order. That’s enough for one day, I think.”

It simultaneously stabbed her and soothed her. To have someone take her by the shoulder, look her in the eyes, and tell her what was real. Snoke’s influence still hung on the fringes of her mind, and she barely restrained her whimper.

Luke shot her a shadow of an understanding smile “We have a lot of training to do.”

The thought of it nearly made her sick, and she knew her master felt it in the air between them. He only fixed her with a knowing look, and started back down the hallway, trusting that she would follow.

She did. Her heart was heavy, she didn’t trust what was left of her mind, and she was desperate to follow the path in the Force laid out before her, into the arms of her waiting friends.

* * *

There was blood in his mouth, bruises blossoming across his knuckles as he sent his fist into Phasma’s faceplate again. The visor over her eyes was cracked into webs, blinding her. She was scrabbling for purchase with her clunky, armored fingers, scratching across his back.

The Lace still burrowed into his scarred spine, digging into his scalp and along his throat. The adrenaline pumping through his body, and the sheer high of the Force power in his veins numbed him, thinking of Poe’s terror and hopelessness, of his mother and his faraway town—the battle raged on around them, but Finn couldn’t focus beyond the fire in his blood.

That was when Phasma finally got a grip into The Lace latched into the base of his skull, and  _ ripped _ with all the strength she could muster. Agony ignited every nerve, and a scream tore from his throat as the grips of the needles in his back pulled against his skin and muscle. Freed from The Lace, but dizzy with the sudden throb of blood running from his wounds, Finn was suddenly grounded back into reality.

“FINN!” somebody cried, the sounds of the battle abruptly louder and more dazzling than before. “Finn, she’s not worth it! Restrain your anger—”

It was Leia.

Phasma flipped him down onto his back, slicking the floor beneath him with blood.

His hands gripped at her helmet, dark stains from the dislodged and loosened Lace around his wrists making his hands slippery.

Phasma closed her hand around his throat, digging her fingers into the flesh where the tiny needles had been just before. Finn gasped for breath, the rage clouding his vision starting to dissipate into a wild terror—he could feel Poe on the other side of the room, could feel his eyes on him, and hear his desperate cry of his name.

He was too angry. He was too out of control—and now he was pressed into the debris and broken tiles, waking up from his red-hot haze, only to be one more kill in Phasma’s long and bloody track record.

“ _ I will enjoy this—”  _ she taunted, breathless from the fight “ _ I will relish killing you, FN-2— _ ”

“ _ This isn’t who you are!” _ Jannah’s voice still echoed into the chamber, even as she was forced to kill those troopers too deep into their conditioning, “ _ You are more than what Phasma made you into— _ ”

Finn took a deep breath, and managed to shove away the helmet, seeing Phasma’s face for the first time.

She was bruised, spitting blood and gritting her teeth as she put all her weight behind the hand at Finn’s throat. 

She was younger than he thought she’d be. 

She was more  _ human  _ than he thought she’d be.

He choked, his vision erupting with black splotches, and managed one, well aimed punch with all his effort, trying to blow out the flames of his anger and focus on survival.

His voice caught in his throat, his breath stuttering as he took the split second of time he had to flip her, gripping her arm and twisting it around until they were back to chest. Finn was pressed hard against the floor under the weight of her armor, and she gripped tight with her free hand at the bloodied trail of The Lace, still attached to him like a leash, tugging again.

Finn wasn’t about to be led around, though—not anymore.

He held her tightly against him, using his legs to keep her in place as he lashed out with his own free hand and snatched the chain out of Phasma’s. He pulled it roughly away, letting out a grunt at the feeling of needles sinking into his palm as he tightened his grip.

Driven to survive, grappling with the reminder of how close he’d come to the Dark Side, he wrapped The Lace around Phasma’s own throat and held tight. Like a makeshift garrote wire, Finn blinked against the pain of the needles and the grief in his heart, his eyes prickling with wet heat as he waited for his former captor to stop struggling and go limp against him.

He was sobbing by the time it finally happened, trapped under the dead weight on top of him. All the strength he had seemed to leech out of his muscles, and he laid there on the debris strewn floor of the Re-Education chamber.

* * *

“Finn— _ Finn _ !” Poe cleared his throat, his breath coming out raspy and thin from the fight, willing himself on even as the adrenaline started to wear away. He started to reach out, but stopped himself at the sight of his shackled, mangled hands, shoving Phasma’s body aside with his shoulder instead.

Hux was crumpled in a heap on the other side of the room—Poe would love to take all the credit. He’d love to grin and say that was all him, despite his injuries. But, BB-8 was still propping him up, his hundred little metal gadgets still fluffed out and ready to fight. Poe shuddered, trying with all his might not to think about the constant throbbing of his hand—if he did, he was sure he’d pass out.

BB-8 beeped, nudging him in the side with a familiar little trill that he genuinely thought he’d never hear again.

Oh. His hands were still shackled in front of him. He was actively avoiding looking at them, so he only shoved them in the little droid’s direction, hearing their offer loud and clear:  _ You want me to get those things off you? _

The battle was waning and they  _ really _ had to go—Finn was bloodied, half naked, trembling and crying. Poe could feel the agony across every inch of his body, phantom pricks and stings ripped open into open wounds all along his body. He could sense the waves of grief and shame ebbing and flowing through their bond like a tide.

Poe was adding his own shame to that, he was sure. All he had to do was look over to the support beam to remember his own mistake. He’d taken all his energy to drop that beam, for even a chance to keep them from getting this Star Destroyer to Crait, to keep Finn alive and in one piece—

Poe _loved_ him. He loved him _so_ _much_.

At least now he  _ knew _ . He knew he was stronger with the Force than he thought. 

“Finn—c’mon Buddy, it’s time to get up. We gotta get out of here.” His hands were free, and he used the less mangled one to cup Finn’s cheek and turn him to look at him.

He didn’t seem to realize Poe was there until then, his cries stuttering and the flicker of new hope sparking in the bond between them.

“We gotta go—they know about Crait. We need to blow this place and get the Hell out before—”

Before his mistake cost them all the entire Resistance.

“Boys.” Leia was at Finn’s other side in a moment, helping to get his feet back under him. Poe had a nasty gouge in his side, but he breathed through it as Finn leaned on him. “We have a problem.”

“Don’t we always?” he intoned, a wave of exhaustion threatening to drown him. “We gotta set some thermal detonators, or trip the hyperdrive to self-destruct—they’re headed to…” he trailed off, suddenly beyond the capacity to meet her piercing gaze.

“Poe, I need you to  _ trust _ me! We are not the only people who still need to escape this ship before it explodes.” 

The overwhelming memory of his dad flashed before his mind’s eye as he looked into Leia’s eyes again for the first time since the Bridge exploded.

_ He cupped the back of Poe’s aching head and pulled him close for a moment that Poe could have lived in, “I’ll be fine. Listen, Son, I know Leia, and you don’t have to agree with her, but it will save your life to trust her—” _

It would save his life to trust her. A pang of yearning for his dad twisted his stomach into a miserable knot, and something in him was compelled to nod, swallowing both the ravaged remains of his pride and the blood in his mouth, “Okay. Who’s here, then? What’s the plan?” 

Rose and Jannah came running up just as he asked it, a ragtag group of helmetless stormtroopers loitering behind them, craning their necks to see Phasma’s broken body tangled around The Lace on the floor. 

“I felt Luke. Luke, and Rey-- but Ren’s here too, we’ll have to…” 

That was when the chamber was bathed in flashing red light-- a siren blared into the space, reverberating into the corridors and all across the ship. 

Time to go. 

“We’ll meet up with them on the way.” Poe decided, leaving no room for argument, nodding to himself. “They’ll find us.” he said, and Leia met his gaze with hard brown eyes.

“Poe!”

“I’m not abandoning anyone, Leia!” he tried not to snap, “I can  _ feel  _ it in the Force. They’re gonna find us-- but you know who’s gonna find us if we stick around here?”

She exhaled a long breath through her nose, pursing her lips at him in a heart-wrenchingly familiar expression that almost gave him the energy to smile. 

“Alright. Time to go.” 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all. Folks. Friends. 
> 
> It's DONE. The TLJ rewrite is FINISHED. 
> 
> This was supposed to be a long process-- I was going to take it one day at a time, and only write when I had time, but this became my saving fucking grace. A solace in a bad time. I couldn't have done this without every single one of YOU. So, thanks. Thank you thank you thank you <3 
> 
> As always, please tell me what you think. I love hearing from you, and this story (like all my others) was a long and difficult process. I love writing, and I love it when you enjoy my writing. <3 I have more in the works for this series, I have SO MANY ideas, so subscribe to my series if you don't want to miss it. 
> 
> Enjoy!

They didn’t have the time to do anything but run, run as fast as they could through the winding, identical corridors. Poe’s torqued knee was screaming, swollen and burning as he forced himself to keep up with the group. Every bone in his body seemed to radiate with a mind-numbing ache, fried with electricity and still thrumming with the last vestiges of the interrogation droid’s cocktail. His head pounded, and if he didn’t think too hard about it, Poe could swear he was back on The Finalizer, searching for some wings that he could fly out of danger. 

He gripped Finn’s bleeding hand as he was blindly led from hallway to hallway, trying to find the right hangar. Leia was trying to guide them, glancing back at the clattering boots of their newest allies to ensure that they were going the right direction. Rose and Jannah strategized with the new defectors they’d collected, but nobody seemed to know where exactly they were. Poe was starting to feel the walls closing in, desperation crawling around under his skin like the hallucinations during his torture. 

They had to get out. There were no other options-- Crait would be destroyed if they didn’t blow the ship in time. Poe will have destroyed  _ everything  _ they fought for if they didn’t blow the ship up in time. 

“There it is!” Rose cried, looking down a shaft-like window to the floor below. There was their ship, apparently-- swarming with stormtroopers. It was an Imperial Lambda shuttle, and Poe blinked owlishly-- this had to be some sort of dream, maybe he hit his head again, there was no  _ way _ \-- 

“You got here in  _ that thing?  _ It looks like it’s falling apart!” If he were more cognizant of himself, maybe he would’ve been proud of all the coherent words he’d been able to string together, but Poe was too busy worrying about a hundred things at once. 

They had been running along a closed off, dark hallway, leading up to a huge window overlooking a hub of First Order officers and garrisons of stormtroopers. They were deep in hyperspace, lightspeed still blurring the void of space into a haze of blue stars-- on their way to the Crait system. Poe choked on air, trapped in a dead end hallway on a maze of a ship, unable to right his own wrongs. 

There were footsteps echoing along to his ears, the telltale clunk and swoosh of stormtrooper armor approaching from their only way onward. Poe collapsed against the window looking down on the unreachable hangar, wildly scanning for any way in. 

But, just behind it, he saw something thrilling, familiar and  _ beautiful _ . 

The Millennium Falcon. But, how are they supposed to  _ get  _ to it?

“How do we get down there?” 

“From here? You can’t.” said one of the stormtroopers, her voice trembling a little as she shook her head. Her eyes were wide and dazed as if she still couldn’t believe she was doing what she was doing “The new Star Destroyer models are designed to limit free movement-- I heard one of the engineers talking to Phasma on my last placement. Defection attempts were becoming too common, they needed to have more control over us.” 

“So…” Rose started.

“So, we’re lost. And even the people that kriffing  _ live here _ can’t help us.” Finn spat, Poe’s own trapped feeling being mirrored back to him by the other man, colliding in their bond.

“Hey-- you’re welcome for the rescue--” 

“Rescue implies  _ getting out _ , doesn’t it?” Poe growled. 

They were near the front of the ship, that was for sure. He could see it out the wide window in front of them, showing the command deck below and the garrisons of stormtroopers just to the side of them-- the only direction they could go was blocked by a wall of encroaching white armor and freshly charged blasters. 

Did any of them have the strength to keep fighting? It didn’t seem to matter-- the new garrison had spotted them, the red blaster fire igniting the dark tiles and forcing them to flee back in the direction they came. 

“BB-8!” Poe called “BB-8, close the blast doors after us!” They just needed time, somebody had to buy them some  _ time _ . They could think about all this mess once they found something that Poe could fly-- 

A beeping whir of binary told him his droid had heard him, and the flashes of red blasters finally stopped with the bang of metal on metal. Now they had no windows, and no gauge of where they were going. The stormtroopers on the other side of the door were still there-- no doubt calling for reinforcements. 

Jannah was breathing heavily, sweat glistening across her forehead, and she banged her head against the wall in frustration. 

“I have an idea.” she finally said, taking a long look at each and every one of them. The way she lingered on Rose and Finn set off an alarm in Poe’s head, feeling like this idea just might be a terrible one. 

Whipping off her pack, the leader of the defectors shook out three long robes. They were patched and odd-looking, like old jedi robes with Alderaanian funeral veils attached and old holo lenses. She thrust them out to them-- one to Rose, Leia, and between where Finn and Poe had attached themselves at the hip. 

“Put these on-- Rose can show you how to use them. Find a way out, save your Resistance.” 

“What about you?” Rose cut in. 

Jannah grinned in a humorless way that sank like a stone in the silence, punctuated by the blast doors malfunctioning as the stormtroopers gained on them. 

“I’ll hold ‘em off--” she looked back at her new defectors “You lot put your helmets back on, you’re a part of this plan. We’ll take my ship, and you’ll hop in that nasty old freighter you’re so fond of.” 

Poe almost thought Rose would refuse, saw the deep frown furrowed into Leia’s forehead. Finn swallowed before he nodded in acceptance. Poe felt every inch of his struggle, the grief strangling Finn’s chest. 

They had to go,  _ now _ . 

“You’ve gotta go-- find your jedi and go already!” 

Wrapped in the musty old cloak, pressed to Finn’s bleeding side, Poe and what damn well might be the last of the Resistance left Jannah behind to follow a new path. Leia was trying to tap into her brother’s Force energy, leading them on with the soles of her feet as their only guide from under the camouflage Jannah had given them. Poe breathed in until his ribs felt like they might snap, the sharpness of the pain anchoring him in the moment through his haze of injuries. 

“We’re getting close-- we’re getting close, Poe.” Finn whispered in his ear, and Poe had no choice other than to believe him. He had to have just that little bit of hope that they could still cut their losses and live to fight another day. 

_ We’re getting close… We’re getting close _ …

Reaching the opening of the hangar released a pressure valve in Poe that he hadn’t even known he had, smelling engine grease and ozone again with escape in sight. His knees nearly buckled, and Finn had to haul him along like an invalid. Their camouflage had them slipping past the hoards of stormtroopers-- Jannah’s ship was there, empty and abandoned, while the troops studied its ancient serial number and tried to parse out where it had come from. 

That was when they felt the first rumble under their feet, like distant thunder under the immaculate tiles. Finn cast him a quick glance, and Poe was about to respond, only to trail off into a gasp of relief as three familiar figures cut into the west entrance of the hangar. 

Rey, Luke and R2-D2 were sneaking between ships, the blue droid leading them on. 

A trill broke the air that Poe would recognize anywhere, terribly loud from between Poe and Finn’s feet. BB-8 saw R2 and  _ bolted  _ out from under their invisible curtain, drawing the attention of every stormtrooper in the hangar. 

_ Kriff _ . 

_ There’s really no point to this thing now _ , he thought, flinging away the cape and ducking out of Finn’s grip, running after his droid as fast as his aching bones would let him. It was his turn to take Finn’s hand and pull him along, blasters firing through the air again as they came out of lightspeed, jolting the ship and making Poe stumble in his single-minded path. 

Rey was the first to reach him at the gangway, her lightsaber ignited and the two guarding stormtroopers dead on the floor just as another,  _ closer  _ rumble shook the entire Star Destroyer. It felt almost as if they were under attack. 

“Get in, kids! We’ve got to go!” Luke Skywalker raced up the gangway, Leia and Rose right on his heels-- 

“WAIT! We’ve gotta blow the ship, they know where the Resistance is--!” Poe shouted, trying to plant his feet against the relentless hold of Rey and Finn on each of his arms. 

“It’s already gonna blow, I planted the charges!” Luke cried back, and before his exhausted brain could fully process the words, Poe was being seated in the cabin. Luke was already in the cockpit. 

They were already taking off, the heavy fire of the stormtroopers’ blasters ricocheting off the Falcon’s sturdy shell. 

As they flew out into space, Poe’s stomach flipped sickeningly. The milky white orb of Crait was within range-- it was right _there_ , so close to realizing his worst fears. 

The final blast of the Star Destroyer sent a shockwave rattling through the Falcon, shaking the floorboards, the furniture, sending them sprawling. Poe didn’t have a single word to say, there was no air in his lungs, nothing left that he could do. His body was beaten and broken, his spirit sucked out of him like a wormhole had opened up just behind his heart. 

They would never get this lucky again. 

Crait continued to hover in the window, just where it had always been. The all-consuming inferno of the Star Destroyer sat in the rear viewfinder like a bad, bad dream. 

Poe would  _ never  _ get this lucky again. 

* * *

Nothing was more bruised than his pride. 

They had tested him and  _ tested  _ him, and found him unworthy. Unworthy of what? Of who? He spat out the blood bubbling up his throat, his hand cradled against his chest and his leg stiff with pain as he forced himself to stay on course. 

Snoke had called him stupid. He had said he was  _ weak _ . Ren wheezed and snarled, his teeth slick, stained with blood. 

Skywalker and the girl wouldn’t get away with it. Ren would show them power. He could show them  _ strength. _ Rey had said that the First Order could  _ never contain his power _ . That he was being stifled by them. 

She would regret how right she’d been. She would  _ regret everything _ . 

Hobbling around a sharp corner and into the dark gangway that led to the escape pods, Ren felt a strangled, vindictive sense of  _ glee  _ rush up through his bloodstream, hitting like a drug. There was one pod left, just at the end of the gangway-- the only one, standing empty, as if waiting for him. 

And there was only one thing in his way: a familiar head of flame red hair, barely staying standing as he limped along the path to the pod. 

“General Hux--” he growled “You look like you’ve been on the losing end of a fight.” 

The other man whipped around, making his teeth grind with a visible surge of agony that must’ve torn through him. Ren huffed a humorless laugh. 

_ “Ren.” _ he hissed, always _hissing_ \-- such a damned useless  _ snake  _ of a man. He may have more friends-- but where were they then? It was just the two of them. Ren grinned, knowing that he was always the better fighter. He was always  _ better  _ in his own right, while Hux relied on his slick, saccharine attitude to get him his honor and his rank. 

Finally, Ren would be able to prove something to  _ himself _ , with no one to impress. 

He was off his leash. 

Breathing into his pain, using it to fuel him, Kylo launched himself down the gangway, sending Hux to the suspended metal floor with a well placed elbow at the center of his torso. His sternum cracked and he sank to the ground. He heard the breath leave his adversary’s lungs, crushing into him with brute strength that Hux could never compare to. Ren soothed his injured pride, applying the feeling that came with that  _ crack _ to his wounds like a balm. 

He made it three steps further, before his ankle was stayed by the iron grip of Hux’s hand. Ren was sent flying, sprawled onto the floor while another thermal detonator blew, getting closer and closer. 

His nose was crushed by the impact of his face on the metal gangway. 

Rage hitting his bloodstream, Ren flipped himself onto his back and drove his foot down into Hux’s smug face as he pushed himself up. His hand was still held close to his chest, every bone shattered, forcing Ren to stand with only the help of one hand on the railing. He set the escape pod back in his sights and hobbled as fast as his legs would take him, Hux’s own limping gait close on his tail, in sync with the pounding of his blood in his ears. 

He had a mission to complete, to lead the galaxy like his grandfather before him-- to  _ eclipse _ the strength and infamy of Darth Vader himself. Kylo Ren would be the greatest of the Sith. He had destroyed Snoke, he was  _ ready  _ to take what was his. 

Kylo wanted control. He wanted _everything_. 

It was just feet from him-- he could reach out and brush his fingers over the hatch of his only hope. 

Hux’s sweaty, mangled hand slapped over his face from behind, clawing his fingers behind Ren’s teeth and pulling him away as if he had his hooks in a fish. Ren flailed, the explosions nearly on top of them, as he gathered every last bit of his Force energy and shoved backward with his broken hand, screaming with the pain as Hux’s nails gouged through his lip and along his cheek, the bones of his hand grinding against each other. 

Ren tasted nothing but blood, and felt the heat of the bombs licking across his flesh as he shoved Hux back behind him a final time and breached the escape pod. 

The doors vacuumed shut with an unforgiving hiss, and Kylo turned just in time to watch as the flames engulfed his rival’s hunched and broken form. 

Not even taking the moment to breathe, Ren slammed on the eject button, leaving everything that had held him back in the debris of Snoke’s regime. 

He  _ was  _ The First Order now.

* * *

It had been a long time since he’d made an escape from a Star Destroyer in the cabin of the Millennium Falcon. For a long few seconds, Luke’s understanding of reality was distant enough for his vision cloud, and he could swear that Han was about to come sauntering out of the cockpit. His grin would be debonair, and he’d wipe his hands on a rag as he’d worked up a sweat saving them all from that fight. 

In his mind’s eye, Chewie was about to flick on the holo-chess board, and C3PO was about to say something polite and unnecessary. Leia used to smile at the end of a mission like that, flush with adrenaline and a job well done. Before she and Han split, before Ben, and before  _ Luke left _ . 

He had left her behind for so long. 

He hoped that, by bringing Kes in, by stopping by to see her all those months ago, he was doing what was best for his sister. It was really just an excuse to go back into hiding. After those few days back in the fold, on D’Qar with guilt drilling a hole through his chest, Luke had abandoned her again. 

It wasn’t that she  _ needed  _ him. General Leia Organa Solo needed him like she needed a blaster shot to the head. 

But he’d been a coward, and he couldn’t do it again. Luke swallowed hard and glanced back at the inferno of the Star Destroyer in their rear viewfinder. He wasn’t the hero of this story, not anymore. He was the teacher, rather than the student, but he felt just as overwhelmed and unprepared as he had when he’d first learned who his father was. 

Luke looked around at the sons and daughters of the New Republic, getting desperately needed medical assistance and comforting each other in the face of impossible odds. Shara’s boy-- Poe-- was shell-shocked and dumbstruck, silently staring at the floor. He occasionally glanced up, his eyes flickering around the cabin as if taking stock of the lives still hanging in the balance of this age-old fight. Kes used to do the same thing, counting the heads of his battalion before and after a battle. Poe had Shara’s sharp gaze, though, scanning the injuries of his friends and cataloguing them as personal faults to be atoned for. 

Poe’s gaze always hovered longest on the younger man beside him. The Force swirled around Finn like a hazy cloud, softening his edges and hinting at the power he had inside him. It reminded Luke of Rey, sitting on his stoop in the soaking rain, only wanting a chance to be trained-- to prove herself. 

Finn _had_ proven himself, if the irregular gouges in the palms of his trembling hands were anything to go by. His Force Energy was stained by darkness, by true darkness where Luke was sure he’d been tested. He’d killed, but he’d been strong enough to hold the Dark Side at bay. His deep brown gaze was unexpectedly wise, glancing over Poe every few moments like he was waiting for the other man to crumple to the floor and pass out. 

Rey held Finn’s hand, seated on the floor in front of her two dearest friends with that little orange astromech fluttering around them all like a worried mother. She was gripping onto Finn’s fingers while their sweet medic friend cleaned every inch of the man’s distinctive gashes, but Luke could see in his padawan’s stony expression that she was holding on for her own comfort as much as his. Her tears slid silently down her face, and Luke felt a tug around his heart as her guilt and anxiety swam through the Force to him. He felt it as if it were his own. 

It hit him with a sharper pang than he thought it would, the bereft gazes of his young comrades and his sister’s lined face the only thing grounding him in reality.

At least they survived. There would be times beyond this to rectify these mistakes. 

Finally taking a deep breath that he'd been holding in, he caught his sister’s eye. She was studying him from where she sat in Han’s old seat at the holo-chess table, and their latent old Force Bond ignited with a rush of doubt and confusion and anger-- and _hope_. 

She wasn’t Leia without hope. 

_ If I hadn’t cut off that bond, _ he wondered,  _ would I have ever abandoned her in the first place? Would I have ever really lost  _ my  _ hope? _

She stood up with more effort than she used to, older bones groaning with the exertion after a long, dangerous day. Or maybe a few. Luke remembered just recently, when an explosion rocketed through the Force and knocked him on his ass, a visceral pain lancing through his back and forcing him to acknowledge his bond with his sister. To check if she was alive. 

She had her arms crossed over her chest, her lips pursed wryly as she looked him over, but he could feel the seriousness of the moment hovering through the link between them. 

“Gonna fly off again?” she broke the silence with a tone like a Beskar. “Or have we proved our cause worthy of your help for more than a few kriffing days?” 

Luke winced and nodded “I deserve that.” 

She didn’t seem convinced that that was _all_ that he deserved, her jaw working like she wanted to tear him apart-- but her eyes were tearing up, and Luke knew he couldn’t leave _ever_ again. 

Gingerly, half expecting to get slapped away, he reached out and placed his hands on his sister’s shoulders. And he could feel that she’d been weighed down by the entire galaxy while he was away. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” it came out of his mouth beyond his control, the words rolling off his tongue so easily. He wouldn’t leave her again, not in their darkest hour. 

One tear slipped past her lashes and down her cheek. Her arms unwound from their defensive knot between them, going to Luke’s waist and gripping him in a tight hug that felt more like fear and mistrust than relief. 

He’d have to work to get her to believe him. 

Luke could work with that-- they all had so much work to do. 

* * *

Rose studied his mangled hand like she was going to have to amputate, even as she molded his shattered metacarpals into a contraption that he knew was going to set him back into place. He bit his cheek against the sharp, constant pain, making his stomach flip and his eyes water. Finn was rigid by his side, the pattern of The Lace now gouged into his skin like a bloody brand. 

Rey was holding Finn’s hand, tear tracks drying on her face and her gaze a million miles away. Poe wasn’t about to ask her what happened. He wasn’t sure he’d even be coherent if he tried to speak— his exhaustion had driven his brain to numbness. 

Until Rose faced him with a needleful of bacta, her steady hand about to inject him just between his crushed and twisted fingers. Finn went impossibly more tense, and Poe felt his pulse jump, dread flooding the link between them— 

“ _No_.” He stumbled around the word, pulling his hand back and swallowing around the ripple of pain that radiated from his immobilized hand. 

Rose looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed but sharp. Her gaze flicked between Poe and Finn’s ashen faces. 

Her eyes lingered in the long, neat patterns of cuts across Finn’s forehead, throat, shoulders, arms— the ones she’d only just cleaned and applied a thick ointment to because Finn refused anything more. 

She just nodded and put the syringe away. No one wanted to talk right then, anyway. 

Time ticked by, and Poe took stock of his situation: Rose, Rey, and Finn were all accounted for; Jannah was gone. It hurt to lose her more than Poe thought it would. He might’ve called her a coward, but he’d like to thank her, at least; Leia and Luke were talking in hushed, serious tones on the other side of the cabin; BB-8 had curled themself under Poe’s knees and started to vibrate, almost as if they were purring. 

Crait was still in one piece, despite Poe’s big mouth. Despite his weakness. 

Rey stroked a hand through Poe’s sweaty, tangled hair and pecked a dry kiss to Finn’s temple before she followed Luke into the cockpit. Rose fussed around them for a short while longer before she, too, disappeared from view. Just Finn and Poe were left, sitting shoulder to shoulder, too tired to even sleep. 

Watching the cuts, still bleeding sluggishly after being cleaned, Poe ran his slightly trembling fingertips across Finn's palm. He was cradling the other man’s hand with his entire body, it felt like. It rested palm up in Poe’s lap, with his entire torso slouched over it as he studied the wounds closer. Or maybe it was because his back was too bruised to support him any more, Poe couldn’t tell. One of his hands had a loose grip around his wrist, feeling Finn’s pulse beat beneath the delicate skin, while the other was set in its wrappings, all but completely immobile. Poe counted the digits of his fingers and felt the callouses there. 

The bloody, clotting gouges in Finn’s skin made a distinctive pattern— he recognized it from the crown of them around Jannah’s forehead. There was the hexagon of deep, talon-like gashes, and the visible hole in the center of each one where the long, thick needle broke skin. The ones up his arms, around his neck and his head— they were all in neat rows. The ones across his palms, though, were clearly not a part of the plan. They were in desperation— when Finn wrapped The Lace around Phasma’s neck and let the needles sink as deep as they could go into her throat while she was strangled. 

Poe remembered what Phasma had said would happen, but…

“What did they do to you?” He forced out, clearing his throat and willing his eyes to stay open. If Finn could be conscious, Poe could be conscious. 

His eyes were warm and dark and soft when he met Poe’s gaze, and the breath caught in his throat. There was still blood in his eyebrow hair, and Poe slowly, gently, brought his thumb to his lips, and licked it so he could brush the smudge away. 

He had told Poe that he loved him. 

He supposed it seemed like the most natural thing in the galaxy. Of course Finn loved him, he’d felt it every day through their bond, but to hear it said out loud...

“Nothing, really. Didn’t do anything worse to me than you—“ 

“Don’t compare this, Finn—“ 

“I  _ felt  _ you, Poe!”

He figured that he would, but it still made his chest ache to think about it “Yeah, I know.” 

“What did they do to  _ you?” _ Finn flipped his palm over in Poe’s lap, petting his warm hand over his thigh before intertwining their fingers. 

He’d been injected with the toxins from the interrogation droid. They made him burn, and hallucinate, and vomit. He’d been electrocuted, and he’d had his ribs all but caved in with Hux’s shiny, pristine boots. 

And he’d do it all again, looking at Finn’s keen gaze and feeling the warmth of his presence tied tightly to his chest. He had known he’d be tortured, and he knew Finn would ache with him, but he was in  _ one piece _ . 

He had told Poe that he loved him. 

“I love you, too— by the way.” He blurted out, too late to stop himself “I-I love you. I never said it back, I just realized, I—“ 

He was cut off by a firm press of lips against his and a gentle palm cupping his bruised jaw. Soon they’d both have more scars, but right then, Poe just wanted to kiss his way into the warm light that he always felt when Finn was kissing him like that. The bond glowed in his mind’s eye, and he whimpered against Finn’s full, slightly chapped lips. It made them both feel a little more steady, maybe even _safe_. 

He could’ve never had this again. He could’ve destroyed the entire kriffing  _ galaxy _ , gotten them both and all their friends killed— Poe hated himself. He was weak and he’d failed. 

“I love you.” Finn breathed, a whisper against Poe’s cheek, his voice trembling slightly as if they were thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same feelings. 

Poe _hated_ himself. He was weak and he’d failed, but  _ then _ . Then, Finn said  _ that _ , and Poe couldn’t help the traitorous joy welling up in him. Whether he deserved to feel it or not. 

“I _love_ you.” Poe replied once more, for good measure. 

Finn smiled. Poe could feel a yawn ballooning it’s way up his throat, and he tried to stifle it, only succeeding in making his eyes water and his ribs burn. Finn winced with the sympathetic pain before he rolled his eyes, that grin peeking out for just a quick second. 

“C’mere and sleep on me— get some rest—!” He took the hand he was holding and used it to urge Poe closer, leaning against Finn’s side as much as his broken body could manage. The link between them vibrated in that high-key, satisfied way that it did whenever they were physically flush, when everything was as close as it could be to  _ right _ . 

Poe’s eyelids fluttered, drooping and exhausted, but he didn’t dare let them close. Not with the smart set of eyes watching from across the cabin-- Leia had a soft, indescribable look lining her face and setting her jaw. 

There was still a conversation he needed to have. If he didn’t, he’d never be able to talk about it again, and the tight clench of his shame was too much to bear alone. 

“Leia?” his voice came out as a croak when he called her over, and she crossed the floor in three measured steps. Her lips were tilted just slightly into that warm, small smile that Poe didn’t deserve. He managed a tiny quirk of lips in return, opening his mouth to try to speak, even though nothing came out but a half a sob. 

“We’re all still here, Poe.” she reached out and placed her hand gently over both Poe’s and Finn’s. She said it as if that was enough. As if he hadn’t almost destroyed the entire Resistance, killed his dad, killed Snap and Jess and the Doc and Chewie-- everyone would be dead. There must’ve been something on his face to say it, because her expression sobered. “You’re a lot like your dad, you know that?” 

He swallowed the guilt clawing up his throat, his dad’s face swimming into his mind’s eye and pricking his eyes with tears. “I almost got him killed. I almost got everyone--”

“And you didn’t. We don’t even know if anyone was even there yet! Poe,” she sighed, crouching down in front of him like he was a little boy “Poe, it’s only been about four standard days since the ambush.” 

It didn’t seem real. It seemed like the past four days had lasted a lifetime. Four days ago, he and Finn had been in their bed on D’Qar, they had been whole and hopeful, they had let themselves believe that safety was a possibility in this kriffing war. 

His hand trembled in Finn’s grip, Leia’s warm palm pressing into his split knuckles. He didn’t know what to say, he shouldn’t have even asked her to talk-- what was he supposed to say? 

“Poe, you’re like your dad because you are a born leader.” she looked right into his eyes, and her other hand settled on his jaw when he tried to shake his head “You care about the lives of the people who fight for you, you do your damnedest to keep them out of harm’s way--”

“Then what was  _ that?” _ he cried, gesturing wildly with his broken hand and sending a jolt of sharp pain rippling up his arm until his vision popped with dark splotches. The exhaustion sent a wave of dizziness through him, making him feel heavy and limp. “I gave them up, Leia.” he finally gathered his words “I didn’t keep them safe, I shouldn’t even be here, I…” 

Finn’s presence pushed deeper into their bond, and Poe leaned in close, physically. He detangled his good hand from Leia and Finn, trailing his fingers up the neat line of bacta-smeared cuts. Finn had been suspended in the air before him, terrified and losing hope. 

“They were going to  _ unravel  _ you…” he muttered, unwilling to say what he was thinking: he’d do it again, to save Finn. 

He nodded, his beautiful, earnest face taking in Poe’s realization. 

“And if you hadn’t dropped that beam, we’d both be dead—  _ and  _ anyone on Crait.” 

Leia flicked her gaze back and forth between them “The beam was you?” 

He knew, logically, that it was, but the memory was hazy with rage and desperation— he shrugged, and jostled every broken rib. 

Leia shook her head as if to clear it before she said “Every general makes mistakes, Poe. You’ve witnessed mine— you know. There are certain things that are going to fester in us forever, but the only way to truly  _ fail  _ as a leader is to become complacent. _Never_ _ stop caring _ .” 

The cabin was silent for a long moment. Rose was diving through the ancient medpack at the back of the ship, Luke and Rey were manning the cockpit, and BB-8 was puttering around, probing the ship’s transmission system. 

That was when Luke poked his head around the corner, looking worn and gray. 

“I have to put in the coordinates to get us into lightspeed. Where are we headed?” 

She smirked wryly “What’re you looking at me for? Follow  _ him _ .” She turned to Poe and had the cheek to  _ wink  _ at him. Poe loved her. 

Luke shot his sister the type of sidelong glance that Poe would’ve found funny if he had the energy for a sense of humor, turning his gaze on him. 

“Commander Dameron? Where are we going?” 

He didn’t kriffing  _ know _ , but at least the empty pit his chest that had been digging itself deeper and deeper was now seeming less bottomless. 

They were all  _ still here _ . 

He breathed as deep as he dared, his lungs aching. His throat hurt from screaming, and he could still hear the crackle of electricity in his ears, and Poe just  _ wanted his dad _ . He needed Kes so badly. 

_ “Transport TR-15 to Millennium Falcon, this is Vice Admiral Kes Dameron— again.”  _

All their heads whipped around to stare at the source of the new, familiar,  _ wonderful  _ voice on the other side of the cabin. Rey emerged from the cockpit at just the same time, and Rose returned with an armful of bacta and bandages. Everybody stopped at the sight of the grainy, flickering hologram coming out of the transmission system. BB-8 cooed like they were proud of themself. 

It must’ve been an old transmission, there was no reason that it should be the _dream_ Poe wished that it would be— he must’ve already been asleep, already dreaming. 

_ “This is my third attempt in contacting you. I have also sent these transmissions to the old Rebellion comms on Crait, and the ship my son and his friends took on their mission four standard days ago.”  _

Four standard days ago. It was current. This was happening  _ right now _ , and they were all just staring at it. 

_ “I’m comming to inform you, Poe, that we’ve been waylaid at home. We landed on Yavin IV shortly after retreating from the ambush, and ended up investigated by a First Order Base that’s parked itself on Yavin III. I was able to put ‘em off our scent for now, but we can’t leave in too large numbers, or they’ll tail us. We can’t meet you on Crait. If you’re in the Falcon, land carefully, they have a shift change every three standard hours— we’ve been tracking them. Check the time stamp of this…”  _

Poe only really heard every other word, busy soaking up every scratch and scrape on his dad’s face— his salt and pepper hair, the concern in his voice. He hadn’t realized how worried he’d been when they last parted, but now it swept him up like a flood. 

_ “... I’m starting to worry, Kiddo, so give us a ring when you get this. Be safe.”  _

_ Be safe.  _ Poe’s heart clenched. 

“Let’s go home.” he finally rasped, his throat choked with his relief and joy. 

They rocketed off into hyperspace, Finn’s light curled up in his chest, their hands holding each other tightly. Rey managed a little smile their way, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Poe made a note of it as he drifted off, and if  _ he  _ noticed it, Finn definitely did too. 

Leia walked over to her, carrying a galaxy’s worth of hope on her small frame. 

“The Resistance will rise again. We’ll rebuild.” She reassured Rey, and all the rest of them. 

He didn’t know if Rey managed to believe her at all, but as he drifted off to sleep, Poe trusted that Leia was right. 


End file.
